Jackfruity

Goodbye, Blogger

2009-11-14T17:45:00.001-05:00

I made the switch today. Jackfruity is now at jackfruity.com.

I'm off to a world of plugins and shiny, shiny dashboards....

Love,
JF

WordCamp NYC 2009

2009-11-14T15:00:00.001-05:00

I'm at WordCamp NYC today, hopping from session to session of a superbly colorful schedule. I signed up partly to hang out with Jer, who's presenting twice this afternoon, and partly to learn what WordPress can do for me and for the SIPA academic community.

In that vein, I'm flipping back and forth between the academic and beginning developer tracks. I spent part of this morning at Jeremy Bogg's session on using WordPress in an academic setting, and I find myself itching to set up a site with Commentpress for a paper I'm co-writing on African media coverage of extractive industries.

Right now I'm sitting in the beginning developer room, listening to Allan Cole attempt to talk about creating child themes without accidentally making his presentation X-rated (so far we've covered "choosing a mate" and "child bearing hips"). His talk (and the one before, a general intro to theming by Daisy Olsen) have me reading through The Morningside Post's template files to see if I can make both the code and the design cleaner.

If that fact that I feel guilty and embarassed about publishing this on Blogger means anything, I think WordCamp's doing its job. Jackfruity.com, powered by WordPress, coming soon.

the cost of climate change

2009-10-24T21:01:00.005-04:00

Economists estimate the impact of climate change at 5 to 20 percent of global GDP. Five percent. Doesn't sound too bad, right?

This map, courtesy of FiveThirtyEight via Strange Maps, shows what the world would look like without the countries that make up the bottom 5% of global GDP. For the record, that's sixty-four countries:

Afghanistan
Bangladesh
Benin
Bhutan
Bolivia
Burkina Faso
Burundi
Cambodia
Cameroon
Central African Republic
Chad
Comoros
Côte d'Ivoire
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Djibouti
Egypt
Eritrea
Ethiopia
Gambia
Ghana
Guinea
Guinea-Bissau
Guyana
Haiti
Honduras
India
Kenya
Kiribati
Kyrgyzstan
Laos
Lesotho
Liberia
Madagascar
Malawi
Mali
Mauritania
Moldova
Mongolia
Mozambique
Myanmar
Nepal
Nicaragua
Niger
Nigeria
Pakistan
Papua New Guinea
Philippines
Rwanda
São Tomé and Príncipe
Senegal
Sierra Leone
Solomon Islands
Sri Lanka
Sudan
Tajikistan
Tanzania
Timor-Leste
Togo
Uganda
Uzbekistan
Vietnam
Yemen
Zambia
Zimbabwe

gays and gorillas

2009-10-23T15:46:00.002-04:00

I finally got a chance to catch up on Google Reader today. Some things you should see:

Friend a Gorilla
For one dollar a year, you can friend a gorilla through the Uganda Wildlife Authority.
"Anyone can be a friend of a gorilla or follow specific gorillas living the forest on Facebook or Twitter for a minimum donation of $1. You will get updates on your gorilla friend(s), including photos, videos, and GPS coordinates, all of which are gathered by actual trackers that visit the gorillas daily."

Ethiopia 2010: Here Comes Africa’s Festival of Electoral Fraud
An overview of recent elections in Nigeria, Kenya and Zimbabwe, looking forward to Ethiopia.
"The glimmer of hope shimmering in the Ghanaian experiment proves that multiparty democracy can be successfully instituted in Ethiopia and elsewhere in Africa, without bloodshed. Failure to do so may once again force Africans to prudently heed Victor Hugo’s admonition: 'When dictatorship is fact, revolution becomes a right.' If it gets to that point, it’s going to be a quagmire too difficult to get out of this time."

The 10,000 Hour Initiative
Jon Gos at Appfrica is starting a program to support young programmers, bloggers and new media enthusiasts.
"Instead of creating institutions from scratch that require enormous resources and high overhead (rent, security, staff etc) the 10,000 Hour Initiative would identify talented individuals and create co-working and co-learning spaces (dubbed 10K Spaces) for them at existing institutions and businesses. The program would allow youth to interact with other peers as well as trained professionals who could tutor and mentor them, helping them to improve their skills, while exposing them to new technologies, ideas and fields they may not have been aware of."

GV Uganda: Bloggers discuss anti-gay bill
A new bill, currently tabled in the Uganda parliament, will increase penalties for homosexuality and add penalties for spreading information about homosexuality. Terrifying and sad. Haute Haiku covers bloggers' reactions for Global Voices.
"Anengiyefa sees that Uganda has just seen hypocrisy of MPs who have unified and are ready to pass a law victimizing homosexuality in the name of morality: this beats the purpose why the system is so anxious to criminalize consensual sex amongst two adults of the same gender and omitting important issues like ethnic violence, tribalism, AIDS, child rape etc."

traitor.

2009-10-17T11:10:00.000-04:00

I've been using Blogger for six years. It's seen me through angsty college musings, a public to-do list, the beginnings of a cooking blog, an ill-fated attempt at blogging in Russian, and an even iller-fated attempt at Rebekah auf Deutsch. Oh, and this here web log.

When I started blogging, WordPress.com didn't exist, and everyone I knew who wasn't using Xanga (cringe) or LiveJournal (ditto) was on Blogger. But as I've continued, more and more of my friends have defected, falling head over heels for WP's plugins and beautiful themes and shiny dashboards and seamless post tagging (Blogger was sadly late to the post categorization party) and integrated commenting (remember the days of Haloscan?).

To which my response has always been: bah humbug.

You see, I'm a bit of a Scrooge: I like Blogger. Specifically, I like the control it gives me over my template and the fact that I have this control absolutely free of charge.

But in the meantime I've grown up and moved to the Big City and somehow become editor and technical director of one of the best graduate school blogs on international affairs in the country. And we use WordPress.

And I like it.

A lot.

Which is why I'm spending November 13 and 14 at WordCamp NYC, surrounded by WordPress lovers and their shiny, shiny dashboards.

If things go well (for the shiny dashboard people), I may even swaddle my precious Jackfruity baby in WordPress clothes.

Care to join me?

(Belated) Blog Action Day: Climate Change

2009-10-16T10:41:00.004-04:00

My post for last year's Blog Action Day on poverty focused on my friend Halle's fair trade organization in Uganda, One Mango Tree.

This year's topic is climate change, and I'm equally excited to talk about the work another of my friends is doing. For the last six weeks I've been working with Global Voices on a project with MS Action Aid Denmark called Global Change.

Global Voices has paired its own bloggers — myself included — with students in the Global Change course, who have been studying climate change and climate justice in preparation for the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December.

I met Sarah through the project: she's a student in Copenhagen, and she's leaving in a few days for Kenya with some other Global Change-ers, where the group will continue their studies and, hopefully, bring back stories of how climate change is affecting people's lives there.

Today Sarah and her colleagues are in front of the Danish Parliament, where they're observing World Food Day by banging pots and pans to, in Sarah's words, "get the politicians to pay attention to the fact that 1 billion people are suffering from hunger right now."

treehugger
demockratees

It can be easy to forget that climate change is about more than trees and cuddly animals and fish swimming around in some distant ocean — all of which I care about, don't get me wrong (especially the cuddly animals). But climate change also has real, physical effects on humans: it's altering weather patterns in unpredictable ways, causing crops to fail for lack of rain in some places while floods wash away entire fields in others.

Climate change is one of the driving forces behind the world food crisis, which, as Sarah pointed out, affects a substantial portion of the world's population.

To sum up: Climate change. It's not just koalas.

Kudos to Sarah and the entire Global Change crew for realizing this.

Australian radio show features citizen journalism in Uganda

2009-09-24T08:50:00.002-04:00

After I published an article for the Committee to Protect Journalists on citizen journalism during the Kampala riots, Shevonne Hunt of Australian radio show The Fourth Estate contacted me to talk about the role Twitter and blogs played in the crisis.

Solomon King (the force behind Ugandan blog aggregator Blogspirit and one of the most prolific tweeters during the riots) and I are featured in the show's most recent podcast. You can access it at The Fourth Estate (scroll down to the bottom, click "Show Episodes," and choose the episode from September 25).

As Solomon says, hope I did all of you justice!

The Internet vs. the printing press: am I wrong?

2009-09-15T20:48:00.003-04:00

Blogren, Berkterns and others, I need your advice.

I'm taking a class on the social impact of mass media. Tonight we discussed the printing press, and how print lends — now less than before, but I think it still applies — a legitimacy to thought that ideas that haven't been committed to paper lack.

Someone suggested that all new forms of media give increased levels of authority to the ideas they transmit — not just print, but radio and television as well.

I argued that this rule doesn't hold for the Internet, and I was promptly shot down by a surprisingly large number of people in the class. Their points were:

The Internet isn't a grand democratic commons. It's highly elite.

People do believe everything they read on the Internet. One example was a newspaper in Bangladesh reprinting a full article from The Onion, not understanding that it was a joke.

I concede the first point. The Internet is definitely not a perfectly democratic commons, though I maintain that, compared to the highly expensive, highly rare (not to mention extremely heavy) printing press, it is far more accessible to the average citizen, whether we're speaking domestically or globally. Though it requires access to a computer, Internet access can often be had cheaply or for free through government programs or at public libraries or Internet cafés.

More importantly, the cost of publication and distribution online is so comparatively small — and the amount of information published and distributed so comparatively great — that I believe it's disingenuous to say that the Internet and the printing press endow ideas with the same authority. Being exceedingly careful to avoid value judgements, I submit that the blog is a very different beast than the Bible.

As for the second point, I would argue that the confusion over what is and is not a legitimate source online stems more from cultural — and here I include generational — differences than from a sense that all things online are true. Expecting accurate cross-cultural interpretations of satire is demanding quite a lot from journalists whose native language is likely not English, as is expecting accurate assessments of spam from someone who still thinks it comes in a can.

So. Am I totally wrong? And if so, why? I was born the same year Apple introduced the Macintosh and got my first e-mail account in sixth grade, so my knowledge of the Internet is primarily first-hand, rather than scholarly. Any articles to which you can refer me would be greatly appreciated, but I'm also looking for personal opinions. When did you first access the Internet? How? Where? Why? What did you think?

The comments are open, folks. Looking forward to your thoughts.

GV Uganda: Blogs, Twitter Keep World Informed as Kampala Riots Continue

2009-09-13T12:43:00.003-04:00

Things seem to have settled down somewhat in Kampala, where riots on Thursday and Friday caused at least nine and possibly as many as 14 deaths.

I've been glued to my laptop for the past few days, feverishly refreshing TweetDeck and Google Reader and paging through Blogspirit, hoping for news of friends in the city. I'm not the only one: accurate information has been hard to come by, and people both in and out of Uganda have relied on blogs and Twitter for much of their news about the riots. This is the subject of my most recent piece on Global Voices Online:

As riots shook Kampala, the capital of Uganda, for the second day, bloggers and other netizens rallied to keep the world informed.

Within 24 hours of the first riots, concerned Kampalans launched Uganda Witness, a crisis reporting site where Ugandans can share news of deaths, looting, presence of government forces and other related information. As of Friday afternoon (9pm GMT) the site had received multiple reports of rioting in downtown Kampala and several of the city's suburbs.

Read the full post »

Featured in the post are Uganda Witness, the 27th Comrade writing for The Kampalan, @dgel, Uganda Talks, Fresh Apples, @mugamuya, @uginsomniac and Ugandan Insomniac, The Malan Family, @CamaraAfrica, @solomonking, and Jon Gos of Appfrica.

Today Jon posted his thoughts on asynchronous info, disjointed data and crisis reporting during the riots. Well worth a read.

Calestous Juma on how Seacom will change everything

2009-09-12T19:50:00.002-04:00

In addition to censorship in China and Twitter in Tehran, I spent a decent part of this summer writing about Internet infrastructure in Africa. The summer had plenty of stories: damage to the SAT-3 cable in western Africa caused major Internet blackouts in Nigeria, Niger, Togo and Benin, a situation that hopefully won't happen again now that Nigeria's new GLO-1 cable has arrived.

But the biggest story of all was Seacom: a new cable connecting eastern Africa to the global undersea cable system. For years eastern Africa has been the only part of the continent without access to this system. Seacom's arrival will bring faster, cheaper broadband Internet to a number of countries that have long relied on expensive satellite connections.

While I haven't personally experienced the joys of Seacom yet (though here's hoping I'll be back in Uganda at some point before the end of the year), friends tell me it's mindblowing. The 27th Comrade writes:

Something big—quite big—and fast—very, very fast—is happening here.

As excited as the blogren and I are about Seacom, Harvard professor Calestous Juma is even more thrilled. Professor Juma is one of the world's leading experts on how science and technology can contribute to sustainable development, and here's what he has to say about Seacom:

The launching of Seacom’s fiber optic cable in July was the single most important infrastructure investment in eastern Africa since the construction of the Uganda Railway, then dubbed “The Lunatic Express."

The single most important infrastructure investment since the construction of the Uganda Railway. For those of you who aren't familiar with The Lunatic Express, its construction began in the 19th century.

Professor Juma will be at Harvard's Berkman Center on Tuesday afternoon to discuss broadband and Internet policy in East Africa. I've been debating how many of my limbs I would be willing to give to be able to see his talk in person, but unfortunately you can't buy time or a train ticket with bodily extremities these days. I'll settle for watching the webcast.

GV Uganda: Nine Dead in Kampala Riots

2009-09-11T11:25:00.005-04:00

Anyone who visits Jackfruity has probably heard of the Kampala riots by now. I put together a post for Global Voices Online last night on the situation in the city, and I'll be writing more as the situation continues.

I'm following the bloggers on Blogspirit as well as @solomonking, @UgandaTalks, @uginsomniac, @appfrica, @AnneMugisha and others on Twitter.

For now, here's the post on Global Voices:

Riots in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, have led to the deaths of at least nine people (BBC) as members of the Baganda ethnic group clashed with police and military forces on Wednesday and Thursday.

The riots are an escalation of an ongoing feud between the central Ugandan government and the King (or “Kabaka”) of the Baganda tribe, Ronald Muwenda Mutebi II. The Baganda people belong to the Kingdom of Buganda, and they are the largest Ugandan ethnic group.

Last week, Mutebi announced that he was planning an official visit to Kayunga, a district about 45km (28 miles) northeast of Kampala. The district is part of the Kingdom of Buganda, but it is also home to many members of the Banyala ethnic group, many of whom would prefer to establish their own independent kingdom.

Banyala leaders announced they would protest the visit and warned Mutebi not to come. The central government responded by warning Mutebi to stay out of the district and arresting several Baganda people in the area who were erecting exhibition stalls and tents in preparation for his arrival.

Read the full post »

In this post are Flourescent, Fresh Apples, GayUganda, @solomonking, @appfrica, Araalingua and Ugandan Insomniac.

For those of you who are in Kampala and are Tweeting, blogging, and posting Facebook updates: thank you so much for keeping the rest of us informed. My thoughts are with you.

GV Nigeria: New Submarine Internet Cable Lands in Lagos

2009-09-07T17:51:00.003-04:00

My next piece is up at Global Voices Online:

The arrival of the GLO-1 submarine cable in Lagos this weekend has West African bloggers excited. GLO-1 connects Nigeria and 13 other West African countries to the global telecommunications system via Europe, bringing new bandwidth to the region.

In late July, damage to the SAT-3 cable — which until last weekend was Nigeria's only link to the global communications system — crippled bank services and Internet access throughout the country. Approximately 70 percent of the country's bandwidth was affected.

According to the Chief Operating Officer of Globacom Limited, which financed the GLO-1 project, the new system will be able to meet all of Nigeria's broadband needs for the next 15 to 20 years. Bloggers are looking forward to faster speeds and cheaper and more reliable access.

Read the full post »

new social media filtering maps from the opennet initiative

2009-09-02T16:02:00.005-04:00

The summer of 2009 was a hectic one for online social media: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and a bevy of other sites fell under the censors' axe in China and Iran as political events — namely the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre and the Iranian presidential election — shook both countries.

If you've been having a hard time keeping track of whether Twitter is accessible in Tehran or if Fallujah is blocked Facebook, you're not alone. Luckily, I just completed a project for the OpenNet Initiative to help you out.

Based on testing conducted in 2008-2009, ONI has compiled data on the most frequently blocked social media sites around the world. We are proud to present five new social media filtering maps that serve as easy visual guides to the countries where Facebook, Flickr, Orkut, Twitter and YouTube are blocked.

Visit them now, and lay your social media filtering questions to rest.

Global Voices Blogger of the Week: Haute Haiku

2009-08-16T21:22:00.001-04:00

My next piece is up at Global Voices Online — it's a profile of Kenyan blogger Haute Haiku, who covers the GLBT African blogosphere for Global Voices. Check it out:

Haute Haiku is one of Global Voices' newest Sub-Saharan African authors. He writes about the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) blogosphere in Africa, including bloggers' thoughts on HIV transmission among men who have sex with men, and how gays and lesbians are treated in East Africa. Haute also blogs about being a gay man in Africa on his personal blog, Single gay life in Kenya.

Read the interview »

Damaged cable causes Internet blackout in four West African countries

2009-07-29T14:24:00.001-04:00

Crossposted on the OpenNet Initiative Blog

Five days ago, the Appfrica tech blog reported an Internet blackout in Benin, a West African country roughly the size of Ohio. The outage, which also affected neighboring Togo, Niger and Nigeria, was caused by damage to the SAT-3 submarine communications cable, which links Portugal and Spain to South Africa via the West African coastline.

The Internet blackout left Benin, Togo and Niger without an optical fiber link to the outside world, meaning Internet users in these countries have been forced to rely on rare, expensive satellite connections to get online. Appfrica managing editor Theresa Carpenter Sondjo, who is based in Benin, writes:

The line to use the computers runs out the door. Every computer is taken, and most have two or three people hovering over its operator. I am the only woman.

In Nigeria, the damage to the SAT-3 cable has affected approximately 70 percent of the country's bandwidth, "crippling" bank services and Internet access. Access issues in the country are further complicated by the failure of Nigerian telecommunications operator Nitel to pay its dues to the SAT-3 Consortium, which has disconnected the Nigerian end of the cable.

Speaking yesterday to Nigeria's Business Day, Lanre Ajayi, the president of the Nigeria Internet Group, described the cable as "a critical national resource because of its importance to the economy and to security." Ajayi has called on the government to declare the SAT-3 cable a "critical national infrastructure."

When damage to the FLAG and SEA-ME-WE 4 undersea cable systems disrupted service in the Middle East and South Asia, knocking out a substantial percentage of Internet activity in Egypt, India and several other countries, operators were able to reroute service and continue to provide access.

In West Africa, rerouting is more difficult: SAT-3 is the only cable connecting the region to the rest of the world, and telecoms operators must negotiate deals with neighboring countries to direct Internet traffic overland until it reaches another country's landing cable. Benin's landing cable services all four countries affected by the damage. Benin has managed to work out an alternate path that routes traffic through the landing cable in Côte d'Ivoire, but Togo and Niger are unable to afford the necessary deals. They will likely have to rely on satellite access until a repair ship, on its way from South Africa, reaches Benin and fixes the cable. The blackout is expected to last at least 10 days in total.

Strangely, news of the blackout has yet to reach the international media. Though Internet penetration rates in the affected countries are low — Nigeria is the highest, at 7.3 percent; with Togo (5.4 percent), Benin (1.9 percent) and Niger (0.5 percent) following — a blackout of this scale seems to deserve more attention than it's gotten thus far. The lack of press coverage begs the question: if the Internet disappears in four countries, but the countries are in Africa, is it still a story?

GV Africa: The arrival of Seacom cable sparks debate

2009-07-24T13:27:00.004-04:00

My next post is up at Global Voices Online:

The arrival of an undersea cable that will increase bandwidth and lower Internet access costs throughout Africa has sparked debate and interest in the African blogoshere. Seacom, which links South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Mozambique to Europe and Asia, went live on Thursday, connecting eastern and southern Africa to the global broadband network.

Johannesburg, Nairobi and Kampala received their connections on Thursday, and Addis Ababa and Kigali are expected to follow. The cable's arrival was originally scheduled for early July, but pirate attacks off the coast of Somalia delayed operations.

Read more »

Lots of bloggers in this one: IT Blog Kenya, In an African Minute, TechMasai, NaijaBlog, Kachwanya, True Kenyan, Issa Michuzi [SW], and Jellyfish, plus Twitter-ers ncallegari, dnyaga, mentalacrobatic and akianastasiou.

No more Namibia: China blocks search results for entire country

2009-07-22T16:11:00.001-04:00

Crossposted at the ONI Blog

According to the Chinese government, Namibia — a southern African country with a population of 2 million — does not exist.

Government censors ordered Chinese search engines to show no search results for the country's name this week, following a corruption scandal involving a Chinese tech company's dealings with Namibia's government.

The company, Nutech, was formerly run by the son of Chinese president Hu Jintao. It is under two separate investigations by Namibian and European Union officials for allegedly using illegal methods, including bribery and unfair trade practices, to secure a USD55.3 million contract to sell cargo scanners to the Namibian government.

Though Jintao's son is not a suspect in the case, government censors have reacted swiftly to the investigation, shutting down two Chinese tech news sites and blocking a list of keywords including "Hu Haifeng, Namibia, Namibia bribery investigation, Yang Fan bribery investigation, Nuctech bribery investigation, [and] southern Africa bribery investigation." Searching for these words on Chinese search engine Baidu.com produces an error message [ZH] that can be translated as, "Search results may not be in line with the relevant laws and regulations and policies, not shown."

The past two months have been busy ones for Chinese censors. In early June the government blocked access to Twitter, Hotmail and Flickr in preparation for the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Less than a week later, the news broke that the government would begin requiring all PCs sold in the country to come equipped with Internet filtering software. And in July, Internet access was completely shut down in the capital of the Xinjiang region after ethnic riots that left nearly 200 people dead.

For more information on China's Internet filtering practices, check out the OpenNet Initiative's recently released China country profile.

GV Uganda: Government Quiet as Famine Takes Toll

2009-07-22T15:06:00.002-04:00

My next piece is up at Global Voices:

As drought spreads throughout East Africa, more than three million Ugandans are at risk of starvation. According to a recent Oxfam report, the famine is the result of spectacular climate change in the region. Massive floods in 2007 ruined crops and eroded fields throughout northern and eastern Uganda. The current drought, which is also affecting neighboring Kenya, has worsened the food shortage and led to the current crisis. Hunger has claimed the lives of more than 40 people in the northern and eastern parts of the country, and bloggers fear more will die before the government takes notice.

Read more »

Bloggers Antipop, Eizzy, Kyomuhendo-Ateenyi and Josh are featured.

giorgos cheliotis: mapping the global commons

2009-07-14T13:35:00.001-04:00

Liveblogging Giorgos Cheliotis's presentation on Mapping the Global Commons: A Quantitative Perspective on Free Cultural Practice at the Berkman Center. Please excuse misrepresentation, misinterpretation, typos and general stupidity.
Cheliotis is interested in measuring the use of the Creative Commons content pool. How much content exists? How free/open is it? How fast is it changing? How much of it is being remixed and fed back into the pool?

You can try to count everything individually, or you can use estimates, community-specific data, external reports and local knowledge. There's an inverse relationship between the scale and the accuracy/richness of your data.

The CC Monitor project tracks the global development of Creative Commons (CC) licensing. It is still being developed, but the project has been tracking the use of CC licenses for over three years. It does not include unported licenses, often used by those in countries that do not have country-specific licenses.

According to the project's World section, North America and Europe use CC licenses more than most regions in the world, with a few notable exceptions: Brazil, which has a sizable CC movement, and some parts of Asia.

Cheliotis is interested in the spread of CC licensing — who is using it and why, and how is it moving from person to person or organization to organization?

The CC Monitor project assigns a "freedom score" to each country based on the most frequently used type of CC license. CC licenses give users of licensed content different permissions. Some works can be used with no restrictions, while the use of others is constrained to non-commercial purposes or in cases where the resulting work is also CC-licensed.

CC Monitor assigns points to each license on a scale of 1 to 6, 6 being the most free (most permissive), then assigns an overall score based on these points. The global freedom score is 3.2. Some other scores:

One way that Cheliotis tracks content reuse is through CCMixter, which allows people to create remixes, samples and mashups of CC-licensed content. Cheliotis' analysis of this content has shown that with a few small exceptions, all of the content on CCMixter is interconnected. The maximum number of remixes he's found so far is 6, but the number of works per generation of reuse drops quickly — most remixes draw on original content, rather than a pre-existing remix. He also found a significant number of peer-to-peer relationships: "I remix content from you, you remix from me."

It's not yet possible to break down content by type (music, video, text, photography), nor is Cheliotis' project currently tracking content that's in the public domain (as opposed to strictly CC-licensed). These are both areas into which he would like to expand in the future.

Ben Wikler: Changing the World of Changing the World

2009-06-30T13:14:00.002-04:00

Liveblogging Ben Wikler's presentation on Changing the World of Changing the World: Pushing the Models of Online Organizing at the Berkman Center. Please excuse misrepresentation, misinterpretation, typos and general stupidity.

Ben Wikler of Avaaz.org is at the Berkman Center today to talk about new models of online organizing.

Wikler begins by explaining net-centered vs. broadcast-centered online activism. The Internet is a little bit like the Brazilian butterfly flapping its wings, causing a thunderstorm in Belgium — except we are all butterflies, and it can be hard to tell how we can act together to (for example) bring rain to the hypothetically drought-stricken Belgium.

Netcentric Activism
One method is the "Grass Mud Horse" — a grassroots protest against Internet censorship in China. Aggregated actions of individual citizens can be channeled for strategic purposes, but's a bit like a shotgun blast vs. a laser beam. It can be hard to focus on your target or to deliver a clear message.

Broadcast-Centered Online Activism
Avaaz.org sends specific, targeted e-mails to different groups of activists. The key to making this work is to incorporate dialogue: there's generally a broad consensus on the need for solutions to problems like climate change, human rights abuses and political crises (even in the Israel/Palestine conflict, "most people support a two-state solution," Wikler says). Avaaz works to "give global public opinion teeth" by building a community. They then track the numerical and qualitative responses to their campaigns throughout this community, allowing them to modify their message as necessary.

If the Internet is a series of tubes, global civil society is a series of tubs, says Wikler — each issue or campaign (Burma, climate change, Zimbabwe) has its own group of interested people. The Internet allows us to connect these tubs to tubes, channeling the water to the biggest fires.

Avaaz is intentionally multi-issue. Wikler's found that the same people who care about what's happening in Zimbabwe are likely to care about what's happening in Sri Lanka. Avaaz looks for ways to channel these common interests into actionable items that can be acted on quickly by members of the larger Avaaz community.

What is Avaaz?
Lightning rod: Avaaz's method allows the channeling of "amorphous public concern" into targeted action.

Battery: Avaaz allows you to build a movement and then tap it for future issues — people concerned about the political crackdown in Burma are more likely to care about the cyclone that came later. Avaaz stores this communal energy, making it easy to build support for campaigns without starting from scratch.

SWAT team: Avaaz operates in a very targeted way. Some of Avaaz's partners can't be political for fear of putting their in-country staff at risk, but Avaaz has the freedom to criticize.

Stem cell: multiple communities can build off of Avaaz.

Burma campaigns
During the fall 2007 crackdown in Burma, 850,000 people got involved through Avaaz. Avaaz presented a petition to the UN Security Council, but that was just the beginning. Its European members contacted the European Parliament; its members in Singapore asked the foreign minister to be more harsh on the junta; other groups acted in other targeted ways. Avaaz was able to work with established groups to get guidance about what would be effect, then to bring in a huge number of concerned people from around the globe who wanted to help but didn't know how.

When the cyclone hit Burma the following spring, Avaaz was able to partner with in-country monks who were part of the relief efforts.

Challenges
Because everything is mediated through the staff, there's a limit on the number of campaigns Avaaz can run. They also have trouble tapping existing expertise. There has to be a way to open things up so Avaaz members can point Avaaz to local crises while also maintaining some sort of filter to make sure that campaigns retain a high level of quality and are relevant to members.

Wikler is afraid that opening up a dialogue may inundate Avaaz members with too many e-mails, drowning out important issues and overwhelming those who only have a small amount of time to donate to any particular cause.

Avaaz has started small but high-volume local groups to try to manage some of this, starting a small campaign and then expanding it to other members after it is established.

Another idea is to run public trainings, teaching people how to do online activism, then let them submit campaign ideas, which will then be rated by other members before being acted on by Avaaz as an organization.

Wikler believes that online activism is still in its infancy — he says there's a global gap in the models that currently exist. He closes by saying we're all in one big tub and asks if we have any ideas for new models of online activism.

Questions
Q: Has anyone ever attempted to use Avaaz's tools for a purpose the organizational staff disagreed with?
A: People wanted to boycott the Olympics because of Chinese censorship, but Avaaz felt this would backfire within China. Wikler spoke with activists in Hong Kong, who said China would respond by tightening control even further.

Q from Jonathan Zittrain: How is Avaaz governed? Are governance issues a distraction? Does Avaaz aspire to become more organically governed (like, say, Wikipedia)?
A: Avaaz is a small group of people in a huge room of noisy people. Unlike a government, it's completely voluntary. Instead of speaking on behalf of all 3.5 million members, Avaaz only speaks on behalf of those who participate in any particular campaign. It's a "horizontal culture" — the executive director only greenlights campaigns that already have support from a random sample of members, and Avaaz is 80 percent funded by its members. Avaaz wants to avoid being directed by either the whims of the staff or the whims of a small group of members.

Q from Jonathan Zittrain: Might be interesting to use multiple approaches to issues, letting people choose multiple ways to be involved in multiple campaigns. Either that or giving people multiple ways to participate in choosing campaigns, so you can see what appeals to people with various amounts of free time.
A: Avaaz does some of this. They responded to the economic crisis with a long poll open to all members that generated options for action and let members vote these up or down. This resulted in a package of action items, some of which Avaaz staff wouldn't have thought of, that people could pick and choose from.

Q: How do you define action? Just writing letters to politicians and sending money? What about collecting best practices that can be adapted for individual causes? We give away our power when we say that petitioning politicians is the best we can do.
A: What happens on the Internet often stays on the Internet, and using online activity to unleash offline activity is something Avaaz is working hard on. Many of the issues on which Avaaz works can't be affected by individual actions that don't involve government — such as carbon emissions. Avaaz is about helping people to find ways to take action together when they know that taking action alone isn't enough — looking for the domino effect.

Q: When will Avaaz have achieved its goal? What metrics are being used to show the community the progress that has been made?
A: Avaaz exists in moments and particular campaigns. It doesn't have a manifesto — its brand is "deployed" on behalf of the people who are taking action. In a world this complex, there aren't any good yardsticks to measure success. The ultimate metric is communicating with your members to let them know how things turned out.

Q: It seems like you're focusing on short-time action that can make a difference on a specific issue, rather than long-term sustained action.
A: In some senses that's true. Each individual development (a march, a petition) is somewhat disconnected, but over time the number of people involved in a campaign (supporting democracy in Zimbabwe, for example) grows and can be remobilized — it's like a snowball.

Q: What percentage of Avaaz's actions is based on global public opinion, and what percentage is focused on other things? It's easy to get "petition overload."
A: Maybe half and half, or closer to 40 percent opinion. Avaaz does a lot of funding public opinion polls, advertising campaigns, support for Internet access — moving more towards these types of things: "activity beyond the outcry." But more people are willing to sign a petition than to donate, at a ratio of 100:1.

Q: How did you pick your languages?
A: Political activism in multiple languages involves more than just translation — you have to shift your content into the political idioms of those languages. Avaaz is working on a Farsi language site right now. They have to figure out how to expand without becoming a translation organization.

Q: How often do members reject an idea from Avaaz?
A: Can't think of a time when something's gotten strong support in a test but not in the general membership. Around 30-50 percent of tested campaigns don't pass the threshold, though. The rate has improved over time, as staff become more familiar with the work and with the members.

Question from Wikler
What's the most convenient way for you tell Avaaz about an issue you want them to work on? Contact Ben [at] avaaz.org.

There Will Be Ink

2009-06-29T11:43:00.004-04:00

The research I did in Uganda in January has just been published.

There Will be Ink: A study of journalism training and the extractive industries in Nigeria, Ghana and Uganda (PDF) is the product of research I conducted with five other students from Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs in the spring of 2009.

We surveyed media coverage of the extractive sector and interviewed African journalists who had training in business and economic reporting. Our goal was to identify the training practices that are most helpful in teaching journalists how to encourage government transparency in the extractive industries through their reporting.

The journalists surveyed said that journalism training had improved their coverage of the extractives, but we concluded that there are other challenges in the African media landscape that are not addressed by training. These include low salaries, lack of resources, pressure from government and advertisers and the lack of freedom of information laws. The report includes recommendations for organizations planning journalism training activities in countries with extractive sectors.

WordPress blocked in Guatemala

2009-06-29T10:09:00.008-04:00

WordPress blocked. Guatemala follows China's example

Crossposted on the OpenNet Initiative blog

Guatemala's ongoing political crisis, which began with the murder of lawyer Rodrigo Rosenberg and has been fueled largely by YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and blogs, reached a new level over the weekend when several ISPs began blocking access to WordPress.com.

Reports of the blocking first reached Twitter on June 26, when user @demuxer noted that some Internet users in Guatemala were unable to access WordPress and wondered if Chapintocables, a political blog created after Rosenberg's death, was somehow involved:

Some users in Guatemala can't access wordpress, is it @chapinocables' fault? #insolitogt #escandalogt

The news spread through Twitter and Facebook, with many Guatemalans encouraging their fellow Internet users to report the blocking on Herdict, which tracks reports of inaccessible sites worldwide. Reports from Guatemala saw a spike over the weekend, with WordPress.com reported inaccessible nearly 30 times.

The block was initially attributed to technical errors, but as WordPress continues to be inaccessible, opinions are changing. Eduardo Arcos of Alt1040 writes [ES]:

Supuestamente se atribuyen problemas técnicos, pero el sentido común dice que se trata de un intento por parte del gobierno guatemalteco de reducir el acceso a información independiente, libre y crítica sobre la crisis política que se vive en el país y la relación con el caso del Twitter de Jeanfer.

[The block has been] allegedly attributed to technical problems, but common sense says that this is an attempt by the Guatemalan government to reduce access to independent information that is free and critical about the political crisis experienced in the country and the respect for Jeanfer of Twitter. [the man who was arrested for criticizing the government on Twitter].

David Alayón of Bitacoras concurs [ES]:

Desde hace unos días, los usuario de Wordpress.com residentes en Guatemala no tienen acceso a este servicio. Se ha descartado la posibilidad de ser un error relacionado con los proveedores de Internet y se baraja el hecho de que el propio gobierno lo haya bloqueado.

For several days, the Wordpress.com users in Guatemala have had no access to the service. The possibility of this being an error related to Internet service providers has been ruled out, and [opinion] has shifted to the idea that the government has blocked it.

Today Chapintocables reported [ES] that three ISPs, Turbonet, Telgua and Tigo, are currently blocking access to WordPress.com:

Actualmente, TurboNet, Telgua, y Tigo son los que tienen restringido el acceso a nuestros blogs, los invitamos gentilmente a que levanten este bloqueo, porque ESTAMOS EN GUATEMALA, NO EN CHINA.

Currently, TurboNet, Telgua and Tico have restricted access to our blogs, we gently invite them to the lift the block, because WE ARE IN GUATEMALA, NOT IN CHINA.

According to Twitter reports, WordPress.com is still accessible through ISP Cybernet de Guatemala S.A.

UPDATE: Renata Avila just posted an update on the situation on Global Voices Advocacy.

Wedding rush sparked by free malaria nets

2009-06-25T11:34:00.003-04:00

The Onion is good, but it definitely doesn't have a monopoly on satirical journalism. Yesterday Uganda's Weekly Observer published this breaking headline:

Uganda: Millions More to Wed As Govt Doles Out Mosquito Nets

"When we asked the couples why they have chosen this particular time to enter holy matrimony, they all had the same answer: that government was going to give them free wedding gowns!" said a source at Peter's Church of Uganda in Kampala. The source added that when they investigated further, they realized that the couples were referring to the government's recent announcement to distribute over 17 million free mosquito nets to combat malaria, which is the leading killer disease in the country. According to health officials, malaria kills 320 people daily.

Asked whether converting mosquito nets into wedding gowns would not undermine government efforts to reduce malaria deaths, one church official said that "the soul is more important than the body."

Well played, Weekly Observer. Well played.

Ugandan journalist, 10 others arrested for treason

2009-06-17T11:16:00.003-04:00

The New Vision is reporting that Patrick Otim, a Pader-based freelance journalist, was arrested and charged with treason along with 10 other men. The group was allegedly forming a rebel organization to fight against the Ugandan government:

They allegedly mobilised logistical support for their rebellion, which included satellite phones, solar panels, Global Positioning System (GPS) machines, black polythene sheets, gum boots, walkie talkies, laptops and fire-arms.

The 11 suspects appeared before Buganda Road Court Magistrate Geoffrey Sayekwo but were not allowed to enter plea because the court did not have jurisdiction. They were unkempt.

Sayekwo read out the charges before sending them on remand to Luzira Prison. They face a second, alternative charge of concealing treason.

The suspects, according to the charge sheet, committed the offence between 2006 and May 2009 in eight districts, including Masindi and Kampala. The other districts are Gulu, Pader, Kitgum, Nebbi, Apac and Amuru.

Blogren, have you heard anything about this?

Beth Kolko: ICTs and their uses in resource constrained environments

2009-06-16T12:30:00.002-04:00

Liveblogging Beth Kolko's presentation on Form, Function and Fiction: ICTs and their uses in resource constrained environments at the Berkman Center. Please excuse misrepresentation, misinterpretation, typos and general stupidity.

The Design for Digital Inclusion group at the University of Washington, which Kolko heads, works on a variety of topics, including tech in Central Asia, the Global Impact Study, the impact of public access to ICTs, technologies for youth with autism, games for development, and more.

Kolko focuses on three main questions: what ICTs are adopted in diverse communities and why? What do people in these communities do with these ICTs? How can we design better technologies for these users?

We assume that ICTs have universal meanings across cultural contexts, but the functions of these technologies vary widely from culture to culture. We need to pay attention to this diversity because designing with it in mind makes systems stronger, less brittle.

Kolko approaches design from both the engineering and humanities perspectives: both form and function. The goal is to blur the boundaries between these two categories until they eventually collapse.

People tend to "get sleepy" when people talk about technology and development, but the findings from the ICT4D field are relevant to a number of communities. Geography is not the primary determiner of resource constraints — the technology developed in, say, Central Asia can be useful in Yakima Valley (in Washington state).

Resource constraints include not just money but also time, cultural capital, screen size, bandwidth.

Kolko's work in Central Asia has both quantitative and qualitative components, including annual surveys, interviews and usability tests. The survey doesn't focus on tech use (though it does have a tech use model) — Kolko's interested in issues of trust, social networks and social institutions as well as technology.

[[Side note: Kolko apologizes for not having a LOLcat photo in her presentation.]]

Internet is weather-dependent: in some places, when it rains, the Internet goes down because rainclouds block satellite access. This intermittent connectivity happens in Central Asia and Cambodia, but also in the rural United States.

Patterns of Internet use (both frequency and duration of access) vary widely across cultures. In Central Asia, most users are online for an hour at a time. There are different pricing structures for chat and actual Internet use (accessing Web pages, etc.).

Mobile phones are particularly key in resource-constrained environments. Mobile phones weren't created to transfer money, but they're being used for banking. This, along with general mobile Internet access, brings up questions of mobile phone security. (Moral: if you have an iPhone, use a password.)

Why don't people use the Internet? It's too expensive, too hard to access, or too confusing. Also: many Central Asians think it's "for young people" (though the definition of who's young depends on who's answering the question).

Kolko has conducted some design ethnography work focused on the exchange of goods and information via social network in Central Asia. Controlling for demographics, people who use their conventional social networks (face-to-face communication) more are more likely to use technology. These people are also more likely to have higher levels of trust in their friends and family.

Of Central Asian Internet users, more people use the Internet for research for school or job training than for any other purpose. The least common use is for online auctions.

Most Central Asians use their mobile phones several times a day (though only 2% of mobile phones are connected to the Internet). People use their phones not because landlines are particularly expensive or hard to get, but because they want to be able to be reached no matter where they are.

Mobiles aren't always great: people are already using them for 419-type scams. But their role has been noticeable in the political sphere: after the 2008 revolution in Kyrgyzstan, phones were used to report rioting and looting, both to warn people to stay home and to rally friends and family to help protect businesses. In Kenya, SMS was used to spread rumors and incite violence.

Part of Kolko's research focuses on games for development. Games are cheaper and, often, easier to use than the Internet. For many Central Asian kids, games provide an first introduction to ICT. This initial training in ICT may give these kids a leg up in terms of later educational and career opportunities.

All of the examples above help provide a better understanding of how ICTs are used in resource-constrained environments. But how to build better ICTs for these regions? You need to focus on design ethnography. For example, looking at how people use mobile phones, how they use their social networks, and the "pain points" of their everyday lives.

Researchers interviewed Central Asians in their homes and had them draw diagrams of their own social networks. Their research lead them to two projects: the Mobile Social Software (MoSoSo) directory addresses the lack of published information directories, working through SMS instead of Internet to list and rate businesses. The Starbus focuses on providing more information about public transportation, using GPS and traffic algorithms to track the location and estimated arrival time of a bus, then send this information via SMS to users who request it.

Interestingly, the initial Starbus design was as low-power as possible to maximize the battery life. They tested the system in Seattle and it worked, but when they brought it to Bishkek they realized that the cell phone towers there required the GPS to have more power. They had to rewire the whole thing — "a classic design approach that failed miserably."

In order to design the best and most appropriate ICTs, you need to drill deeply to truly define what an "Internet user" is in a particular environment — you can't assume all Internet users access or use the Internet in the same way.

My muse is sadly thin.

2009-06-16T11:57:00.001-04:00

Last Tuesday I was at the Berkman Center for "The Second and Third Enclosures", a presentation by poet and cultural critic Lewis Hyde on what he calls "our 'cultural commons,' that vast store of ideas, inventions, and works of art that we have inherited from the past and continue to produce."

Hyde is working on a book about why these ideas and works of art should be owned by the commons, rather than by individuals. His thesis is that limiting ownership of creative works also limits human creativity in ways we can't begin to imagine (mostly because there's no way to know that we're missing out on them).

I've been trying for a week to write up my notes from the event, but I keep getting bogged down by amusing quotes (see: "beating back the bounds," "fattening your muse") and a train of thought that winds through medieval England, Scottish printing presses and Roman law to somehow end up at John Cage's 4'33".

This is not to say that Hyde's presentation was less than coherent: many others, including fellow Berktern Joey Mornin, blogging machine David Weinberger and Ethan Zuckerman, have posted recaps.

But potential blog posts have painfully short half-lives, and in half an hour I'm heading back to the Berkman conference room for a talk by Beth Kolko on how communications technology takes on different meanings in resource-constrained environments. I'm going to force myself to live-blog this one.

Evaluating China's Green Dam software

2009-06-12T15:35:00.005-04:00

China's Green Dam: The Implications of Government Control Encroaching on the Home PC

The news that China will begin requiring all computers sold in the country to include Internet filtering software has sparked waves of commentary on topics ranging from legal challenges to human rights issues to concerns about security and effectiveness. Also, a post on African porn.

The software, known as Green Dam Youth Escort, ostensibly protects children from harmful information online by filtering out sites that contain prohibited keywords. It will be mandatory on every computer sold in China after July 1, 2009.

The OpenNet Initiative, where I'm working as part of my internship for Harvard's Berkman Center, worked this week to evaluate the functionality of Green Dam. In "China's Green Dam: The Implications of Government Control Encroaching on the Home PC," we review the functional elements of this new software and explore the possible effects of its implementation on a national scale. We conclude that Green Dam is deeply flawed and poses critical security concerns for users.

China censors light-colored naked photos; darker skin gets through filter

2009-06-10T11:11:00.005-04:00

The latest news in the world of Internet censorship is about China's Green Dam software, which ostensibly protects Chinese children by filtering out pornographic Web sites.

China has recently announced that all PCs sold in the country must come with the software, beginning on July 1, 2009. Critics say Green Dam will be used to crack down on Internet users, making it even more difficult to access uncensored information from China.

In addition to blocking sites that include keywords such as "pornography" and, somewhat less justifiably, "touch" and "play," the software also filters out images that have a high percentage of "skin colored" pixels. Oiwan Lam at Global Voices rounded up Chinese reactions to the software; among them was this gem:

How much flesh color does it take to make something “pornography”? I went on the Internet to check out some animal photos. A lovely little naked pig was sent onto the black list. Pitiful little pig! I was curious, so I looked up some photos of naked African women. Oh, they were not censored!

So apparently, it's morally reprehensible to look up animals or, say, kids playing soccer, but African porn is totally okay!

For the latest news on Green Dam, check out the #greendam hashtag on Twitter.

Crossposted on the OpenNet Initiative blog.

Beyond Objectivity: Global Voices and the Future of Journalism

2009-06-03T15:16:00.002-04:00

Yesterday afternoon I attended Lokman Tsui's talk on Beyond Objectivity: Global Voices and the Future of Journalism at the Berkman Center, where I'm interning for the summer.

I met Lokman last July in Budapest for the 2008 Global Voices Summit, and in February I had the great fortune to spend a week with him and 10 other Global Voices team members in Miami for We Media.

Lokman's writing his dissertation on how the Internet is driving institutional changes of journalism in a globalized world. His talk yesterday covered the research he's been doing on Global Voices, a project that aggregates and translates blogs and other citizen media from around the world.

"We really cannot measure the new with standards we designed for the old."

Lokman argued that we need a new conceptual toolkit to explain what Global Voices is doing. Instead of approaching Global Voices through the lens of professional, alternative or even public journalism (for a more thorough description of these types, see Corinna di Gennaro's recap of the talk), Lokman proposes a fourth approach: evaluating Global Voices as a tool for communicative democracy, whose purpose is conversation and whose form is hospitality, rather than sheer objectivity.

"He is Ethan Zuckerman. I'm...Lokman."

Hospitality is important, Lokman explained, because power differentials exist. No matter how far we've come in terms of shifting the power of the (exclusively printing) press into the hands of bloggers, the reality is that some people — or groups of people, or countries — have a distinct power advantage over others. But hospitality can subvert this power inequality and help ensure that inclusive discussion takes place.

Lokman used the example of visiting the home of Ethan Zuckerman, one of the founders of Global Voices. As a relative newcomer to the organization, Lokman admitted to feeling intimidated, but Ethan — as all good hosts do — switched up the power structure by treating Lokman as a guest and serving him.

Hospitality is also important because it negates the need for neutral third spaces — meeting Ethan in a coffee shop, for example — where differences between people are bracketed out and ignored. Furthermore, hospitality places important conditions on inclusion — if a guest behaves badly, the host has every right to throw him or her out. This solves the problem of "how tolerant is too tolerant" and allows discussion to remain productive.

I've been privileged to be a member of the Global Voices community for just over two years, and in that time I have been amazed by the hospitality that exists among its members. In addition to traveling to each other's countries and staying at each other's houses — a more traditional view of hospitality — GV-ers exhibit respect, understanding, and appreciation for differences every day on our authors' listserve and in our writing, even when it comes to sensitive issues like gay rights and politics in Gaza.

Lokman admitted that the idea of hospitality as a barometer for journalism may be a little "kumbaya" for some people. Hospitality is easy among friends who have common goals and interests, but it's more important — and more dangerous — among strangers. Lokman closed is talk by expressing the hope that, by emphasizing hospitality in journalism, we can raise the normative stakes.

I definitely fall into the warm fuzzy, kumbaya camp when it comes to Global Voices, as I am ceaselessly amazed by the work GV-ers do to amplify marginalized or otherwise buried voices for a global audience. After talking to several of my fellow Berkman interns today, though, I have a couple of questions:

What's the next step?
For this shift to take place, the way people — mainstream/traditional media practitioners, citizen journalists and media audiences — think of media needs to shift radically. Citizen journalists seem to be leading this shift, but I worry that not enough people are following. What can we do to nudge this process along?

How do we measure success?
Ethan expressed concerns that Global Voices, despite its accomplishments, is not an unqualified success — it's not widely read enough, for one thing, nor is it widely respected outside of a particular citizen-journalism-happy community. But how do we know when we've reached our goal? This question is tied pretty closely to the next:

What does it look like?
Obviously, mainstream media is undergoing serious changes right now. But once things shake out, will a shift towards hospitality result in the New York Times incorporating more Global Voices-stye aggregation? Will Global Voices become so widely read that it ends up replacing more traditional online news sources?

I apologize if these questions are too basic (or if Lokman answered them, and I missed what he said), but I think they're a decent starting place. If you have any thoughts, hit up the comments below.

If you missed the talk, you can watch or listen at Berkman Interactive.

Getting Lost in Boston (Alternative Title: Why I Need an iPhone)

2009-06-01T18:04:00.008-04:00

I'm spending the summer in Cambridge, interning for the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Today I went to the office for the first time, met the 30-something other interns and started putting faces with names.

That was all good, and I'm excited about starting more concrete projects with the OpenNet Initiative and the Internet & Democracy Project tomorrow.

But then I tried to walk home.

(Note: I am terrible with directions. Sometimes things work out, and I end up finding a metro station that can get me back home (see: St. Petersburg, New York). Other times, I end up fending off the persistent attentions of a motorcycle taxi driver named Edward.)

The walk from my apartment to Berkman is simple:

Apartment to Berkman: the easy way

But in the interest of exploring the area, I decided to hit up Porter Square (the closest metro stop) on the way home:

Berkman to apartment: exploring

I made it to Porter Square, but then I failed. Miserably:

#fail, or: How I got home

Conway Playground is when I finally stopped and called someone for directions.

Until now, I've been vehemently opposed to getting an iPhone: they're pretty, yes, but something about the clunky, wifi-devoid simplicity of my basic Samsung (or, may it rest in peace, my beloved Nokia 3310) appeals to me: I'm not constantly tied to my e-mail, it's not expensive to replace, and it does — or at least did, until today — everything I need it to do.

But now that I live in a city that's not laid out in a beautifully designed grid (barring Broadway and everything below 14th Street), I'm reconsidering. Internet: I think I want an iPhone.

(Related: Ethan Zuckerman's ode to the retro mobile phone, including the Nokia 1100 (which I use when I'm in Uganda) and its "integrated sewer avoidance system.")

GV Uganda: Katine Project brings villagers to blogosphere

2009-05-28T09:06:00.004-04:00

My next piece is up at Global Voices Online:

Uganda's Internet penetration rate is a little over six percent, a number that prevents large swaths of the population from joining Uganda's blogren or accessing the global blogosphere. For one village, the Guardian and Observer's Katine Project is working to change that.

Since October 2007, the Katine Project has tracked the impact of a dedicated £2.5 million ($4 million) AMREF development project in Katine, a rural sub-county in northeastern Uganda (virtual tour). In addition to providing general news about Uganda and tracking developments in five key project areas, the project has been training local residents to use video cameras to document their lives.

Read more »

jackfruit of the week (05.27.09): opportunities for Ugandan journalists

2009-05-27T17:26:00.002-04:00

Jackfruit comes to Kansas: I found this abomination in my parents' grocery store this week. I am horrified.

Just a quick note to let you know about two upcoming opportunities for Ugandan journalists:

Inter-ethnic & Conflict Workshop
Deadline: June 1, 2009
Mid-career practitioners from Commonwealth Broadcasting Association (CBA) member organizations from Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi and Mozambique are invited to apply to attend a development journalism workshop titled "Interethnic and Conflict Reporting," to take place in Nairobi, Kenya from June 22-26, 2009.

Read more and download an application at the CBA web site.

Radio Fellowships
Deadline: August 18, 2009
Young journalists interested in covering children’s issues can apply for the Oscar van Leer Fellowship, which will offer professional training in journalism and children’s issues.

For more information, visit the Bernard van Leer Foundation web site or
contact Vera van der Grift at ovlf-info [at] bvleerf [dot] nl.

The Honest Scrap Award

2009-05-26T23:24:00.004-04:00

So much for the Ugandan Best of Blogs Awards. The blogren have jumped ship to the Honest Scrap Award, an informal, apparently international bloggers' honor-slash-meme that's been making the rounds in East Africa.

As far as I can tell, the award entered the Ugandan blogosphere through Ugandan Girl, who got it from Afronuts in Nigeria. Ugandan Girl passed it to Eizzy, Nevender, Mjay, SilverBow, among others.

Since then it's hit up Emi, Normzo, Jny, Samali, Carsozy, Yz and Wilde Yearnings, plus a bunch more, including Biche at Chick About Town.

Earlier this month, she passed it along to me.

I'm flattered, but I'll resist the immense urge to make a gratuitous, Sally Field-esque acceptance speech. Instead I'll just show you hers:

You like me! Right now...you like me!

The award stipulates that I:

Brag about the award.
Include the name of the blogger who bestowed the award on me and link back to the blogger.
Choose a minimum of seven (7) blogs that I find brilliant in content or design.
Show their names and links and leave a comment informing them that they were prized with Honest Weblog.
List at least ten (10) honest things about myself.

To be honest, several of my top choices have been awarded already. I don't know if it's legal or not to re-award them, but I'm going to do it anyway. In no particular order, the seven East African bloggers whose blogs' content or design I find brilliant:

Rev/Comrade at The Dying Communist, for constantly provoking me. Samali already named him, but I'm hoping the additional mention will put even more pressure on him to start blogging again.
Angela Kintu, for constant thoughtful analysis.
Rosebell, for bringing important things to my attention.
Rosebell's acceptance post
SebaSpace at AfroGay, for persistence in the face of disheartening adversity.
Tamaku at Diary of a gay Kenyan (he's already accepted the award once), for courage and wit.
Tumwi at Ugandan Insomniac, for unique insight and wry humor.
Naughty Feeling at Queeattitude, for a recent post that broke my heart.

And for my ten honest things:

I despise eggplant.
I can't whistle.
I like cupcakes in theory, but not in practice.
A two-week trip to Uganda in January 2006 saved me from a year in Vladivostok and five to seven years' worth of studying 19th century Russian literature.
Most of the things I "overhear" on Twitter are pulled from conversations I've had.
I desperately need to move my blog to WordPress.
But I'm resisting because I don't want to give up the ability to obsessively tweak my design through Blogger.
I'm three degrees from Joseph Kony, two degrees from Wernher von Braun and one degree from Mikhail Gorbachev.
I have a thing for giant storks.
I claim to hate memes, but this is the third time I've participated in one on Jackfruity (here are the first and second).

Blogging for a Cause: Global Voices Advocacy

2009-05-13T09:51:00.003-04:00

Zemanta, a Firefox extension that automatically suggests related tags, links, photos and articles for your blog posts and e-mails, is running a competition to encourage blogging for worthwhile causes. The five blogs that get the most votes will each win $3,000.

I vote for Global Voices Advocacy because of the phenomenal work its bloggers do to protect freedom of expression and free access to information online. GV Advocacy (or Advox, as it's also known) is connected to Global Voices Online, a project for which I've been writing about the blogren for two years.

In addition to reporting on issues like blogger arrests and Internet censorship, Advox works on a number of projects to help bloggers and other online activists — definitely worth my vote.

Interested in supporting Advox? The deadline for the competition is June 6, 2009, and you must include the following sentence in your post:

This blog post is part of Zemanta's "Blogging For a Cause" campaign to raise awareness and funds for worthy causes that bloggers care about.

Besim

2009-05-10T00:33:00.007-04:00

I'm doing some spring cleaning, one part of which is a much-needed reorganization of the files on my hard drive. In the process I found some notes from my trip to the Balkans last summer.

Besim hurried out to us from under the awning of one of the countless tiny cafes lining Baščaršija Square. "Ladies," he called, "you need a room, maybe?" We were the worst sort of travelers, trudging through the old part of the city under the weight of trendy hiking backpacks designed for treks at much higher altitudes. Besim's advance spared us the embarrassment of winding our way through an endless maze of narrow cobblestone streets in search of a hostel that had once managed to impress the writer of our guidebook, and after a moment of whispered debate we agreed to see the room.

Besim + Coffee

We followed him up a slick twist of stony stairs to his apartment, a two-floor collection of rooms filled with Persian rugs and hundreds of postcards from around the world. "From my tourists," he said, beaming. "They send postcard to me from their home." A field of sunflowers caught my eye; someone else from Kansas had liked her stay enough to write Besim and thank him.

He led us upstairs to the room, a breezy, open space with a terrace overlooking the city. He pointed to the hills across from us. "The war," he started, then faltered, unable to find the English words for what he wanted to say. "Snipers. Broke all the glass." We found out later that the room had been destroyed by Serbian mortar fire.

The morning we left, Besim made us Bosnian coffee and sat with us on the couch, sipping and smoking alternately. "You send me postcard," he reminded us. "Drink from the fountain. You come back, you stay with me."

I spent hours on the train between Sarajevo and Budapest scribbling in my notebook about how I would make it back to Bosnia before I'd finished grad school. I'm halfway done, and it hasn't happened yet. I did manage to send Besim his postcard, though.

the legend of didi's world

2009-05-05T17:21:00.004-04:00

Long-time readers of this blog may remember my ill-fated trip to the creepy wonderland known as Didi's World. Now, from the Atherstones in Uganda, the true story of Kampala's most famous amusement park:

The legend of Didi's World begins over ten years ago, when these same rides and structures resided in Italy. Evidently, someone was killed on one ride, so the generous Italians donated all the equipment to Africa.

In other words: IT'S HAUNTED. I'd like to point out that I totally called this one.

Didi's World decor

“This can only get better”: gay rights bloggers in East Africa

2009-05-05T15:05:00.002-04:00

For a class this semester, I wrote an article on gay rights bloggers in (mostly East) Africa. Since so many of them are blogren or connected to the blogren, I thought I'd share it with you. If you know of other gay rights bloggers in the area (or if you happen to be one yourself), especially women, please let me know in the comments — I'm putting together a new Google Reader list.

Dr. James Nsaba Buturo

Uganda is the only country in the world whose cabinet includes a Minister of Ethics and Integrity. The position is currently held by Dr. James Nsaba Buturo, who has been charged with developing and coordinating the implementation of a national anti-corruption policy. Instead, Dr. Buturo has chosen to focus his political career on what he considers a much greater threat: homosexuality.

Dr. Buturo responded to a recent United Nations statement on sexual orientation and gender identity by accusing the UN, UNICEF, Amnesty International and a host of other international organizations of promoting an “abnormal, unhealthy, unnatural” lifestyle in Uganda. Sadly, he is not alone: in the last five years, a number of African governments have become more vocal against homosexuality, with many enacting harsher punishments for gays and lesbians. However, a group of Africans is fighting back.

Using nothing more than a computer and an Internet connection as their weapons, Africa’s gay and lesbian bloggers have begun to speak out against the discrimination they face. Spread throughout the continent and connecting online, they provide a safe, anonymous community for African homosexuals, as well as a forum for criticizing draconian government policies against homosexuality.

Gay Nairobi Man, a Kenyan who uses a pseudonym to avoid having his sexuality discovered by his family and employers, has been blogging about gay rights issues in Africa since March 2006. In that time his blog, Rants and Raves of a Gay Kenyan Man, has received over 30,000 visitors from 170 countries.

“I had a very tough time dealing with my sexuality and only came out to myself in my late twenties,” he writes in an e-mail. “I felt that I should demystify the Kenyan gay man and show another side of a gay person who loves life, is successful and is in a monogamous loving relationship. I also wanted to retain my anonymity, and blogging was the only way I could do that.”

The anonymity of the Internet is a major draw for African gay rights activists. Consensual homosexual conduct is punishable by up to 14 years in prison in Kenya; in Uganda, convicted gays and lesbians can spend life in prison. In other countries, punishments are even more harsh. Last May, the president of Gambia gave gays and lesbians 24 hours to leave the country or face “serious consequences.” And in the 12 states of Nigeria subject to Sharia law, homosexuality is punishable by death.

“I guard my anonymity. Very jealously,” says a Kampala-based blogger known as Gay Uganda. “My anonymity is the biggest and best shield protecting me in Uganda,” where last week two men were followed home and arrested after several people saw them kissing in a bar and reported them to the local police.

Gays and lesbians in much of Africa live in constant fear of being outed. Tamaku, who blogs at Diary of a Gay Kenyan, writes, “Kenya has a past of being a brutal police state…and due to corruption you don't know who to trust.” In September 2007, the Red Pepper, a daily Ugandan newspaper, published a list of suspected homosexuals, along with their workplaces and home addresses. Many of those on the list suffered threats, discrimination and even physical attacks after the list was printed.

The source of such pervasive homophobia is difficult to pin down, but many Africans who are opposed to homosexuality claim that same-sex relationships are a Western invention. This idea is often supported by governments: multiple African leaders, including the former presidents of both Kenya and Namibia, have labeled homosexuality “against African tradition” and “alien to African culture.” Zimbabwe’s President, Robert Mugabe, has gone so far as to call it a “white disease.”

While these views are often widely supported by the public, they are not necessarily accurate. Decades- and even centuries-old traditions involving same-sex relationships have been documented in multiple cultures and ethnic groups throughout the continent, including the Meru of Kenya, the Maale of Ethiopia and the Mossi of Burkina Faso.

“I went to school in Europe, and I have tried to explain to people that I always knew I was gay long before my sojourn into the west,” says Gay Nairobi Man. Still, he and other gay bloggers often receive e-mails or comments on their blogs accusing them of receiving funding from Western organizations in exchange for promoting a gay agenda in Africa.

Demonstrator at August 2007 anti-gay rally in Kampala

While thousands of dollars are indeed pouring into Africa from Western organizations focused on homosexuality, the majority of this money is funding anti-gay rights activities. Earlier this year Uganda held a four day “anti-homosexuality seminar” sponsored by Defend the Family International, an American organization devoted to “gay recovery.” Representatives from Defend the Family spoke to over 10,000 people at school and churches in Kampala. They also visited Parliament, where they met with nearly 100 senior government officials.

In contrast, when Uganda’s largest gay rights organization, Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), held a press conference in August 2007 demanding recognition from the government, participants wore masks. “I do wish we gay people had the money and the ability to organize like these guys have accused us of being. I mean, it would just be fair, you know!” writes Gay Uganda on his blog.

Supakoja, a gay man who blogs under a pseudonym at AfroGay, compares SMUG’s funding to the money Ugandan anti-homosexual activist Martin Ssempa receives from a conservative American organization: “While SMUG is a local Ugandan organization with only peripheral foreign support from gay individuals and organizations, Martin Ssempa's entire anti-homosexual…campaign is funded from Denver, Colorado,” he writes.

Despite the inequities in funding, Africa’s gay bloggers are doing what they can to promote gay rights offline as well as through their writing. Tamaku regularly petitions European Union officials, asking them to work with Kenyan authorities to increase protections for Kenyan gays and lesbians, and Gay Nairobi Man has collaborated with several people he met through his blog to sponsor the education of two Kenyan boys who were abandoned by their families after coming out as gay.

This kind of action – a blend of online and offline activism – is what makes bloggers such a strong force for gay rights in Africa. The ability to express their thoughts freely on the Internet, where the threat of being outed is considerably less intense, is enabling gay Africans to be more vocal about the oppression they face and making it easier connect with like-minded individuals.

To be sure, the recent government crackdowns on the gay community are worrying. Still, African gay rights bloggers believe there is light at the end of the tunnel. “The very act of writing about how I feel makes me feel a bit of the freedom,” says Gay Uganda.

“We are seeing a strong generation of gay men in their teens and early twenties who are not afraid to come out and demand their rights to be recognized,” writes Gay Nairobi Man in a recent e-mail. “This can only get better.”

Mamdani vs. Prendergast: the video

2009-05-04T22:22:00.002-04:00

Last month I attended The Darfur Debate, a conversation between African political expert Mahmood Mamdani and Darfur advocate John Prendergast. In case my arbitrary points-laden round-up wasn't enough, you can now watch the video yourself, courtesy of Columbia's YouTube account:

Let me know if you agree with my assessments of Prendergast's sartorial choices.

GV Uganda: President's wife appointed to cabinet

2009-04-15T19:24:00.002-04:00

My next piece is up at Global Voices:

February's cabinet reshuffle has Ugandan bloggers making 2011 election predictions.

Among the new appointments President Yoweri Museveni made was the posting of his wife Janet as state minister for Karamoja, a region in northeastern Uganda that has been plagued by conflict and extreme poverty for decades.

While some bloggers think the high-profile appointment could bring much-needed attention to the region, others are more skeptical.

Read more »

Mamdani vs. Prendergast

2009-04-14T13:51:00.004-04:00

Tonight Mahmood Mamdani and John Prendergast will fight to the death share a civil debate on the situation in Darfur, an event I'm hoping will end in hair-pulling and the shouting of epithets. I'll be tweeting from the debate, and you can follow along below.

Mamdani vs. Prendergast

Ugandan IT successes

2009-03-30T11:06:00.002-04:00

Blogret* and technology entrepreneur Jon Gosier was interviewed by Jonathan Marks at SXSW this month. Marks writes:

I'm very impressed with the work of Jonathan Gosier, not only because of the pioneering work he is doing in the fledgling IT sector in Kampala, Uganda, but also because of the quality of his contributions to his blog appafrica.net. He believes that building sustainable businesses and using local talent is key - so obvious, yet so often missing in daily practice.

Check out the video:

Ugandan IT Successes - Jonathan Gosier from Jonathan Marks on Vimeo.

*blogren, masculine, singular

mobile activism in african elections

2009-03-20T11:53:00.004-04:00

A paper I wrote for Anne Nelson's New Media in Development Communications class last semester was published this week on DigiActive and reviewed by Pambazuka News. The abstract:

The proliferation of mobile phones in Africa is transforming the political and social landscape of the developing world, empowering people to source and share their own information and to have a greater say in what comes to international attention. This paper compares the use and impact of mobile technology in three recent African elections: Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Kenya.

In Nigeria’s April 2007 presidential election, a local civil society organization used free software to collect over 10,000 text message reports from voters around the country, boosting citizen participation in a political process many Nigerians doubted. In Sierra Leone’s August-September 2007 elections, trained local monitors used mobile phones to collect data from designated polling sites, enabling the independent National Election Watch to compile and release an accurate, comprehensive analysis of the election almost two weeks before the official report. And in Kenya’s December 2007 election, a group of local digital activists developed and implemented a citizen reporting platform to allow Kenyans to report and track post-election violence during a month-long media blackout, collecting and publishing a comprehensive account of riots, displacement and human rights abuses that serves as one of the best available records of the crisis.

You can read the whole paper here.

update
Katrin Verclas posted a critique on MobileActive.org. Many of her comments are spot on, and she sheds valuable light on the role the December 2008 elections in Ghana play in this discussion.

goodbye, haloscan

2009-03-10T16:19:00.002-04:00

Some of you may notice that all the posts here are now sans comments. It's not because I suddenly got defensive about Rev's ribbing or because I wanted to get rid of Martin Ssempa's famed tirade.

It's part of a grand WordPress rollover that will happen sometime in the next...er...year? Or so? And having all new comments in Blogger will make preserving all of your lovely thoughts much, much easier.

So: goodbye, Haloscan, and hello, brave new world.

Global Voices Uganda: The Literary Blogren

2009-03-01T10:25:00.003-05:00

My next piece is up at Global Voices Online:

Uganda's bloggers are increasingly using their blogs as forums for literary expression, and online poems, short stories and multi-part novellas are becoming increasingly popular.

Carsozy is one of the blogren's most prolific creative writers. His series, The Devil's Bonfire, is the story of Simon Katende, a young Kampalan who leaves the city to visit his grandfather and gets mixed up in things he doesn't understand:
He was halfway to the bar when he saw her, his entire body froze and his mouth opened in shock, the glass slipped from his fingers and fell to the ground.

Read more »

Featured in the piece are Carsozy, Jon Gosier and Gay Uganda.

Miami V(o)ice(s)

2009-02-28T22:51:00.012-05:00

Global Voices team members Lova, Jeremy, Lokman and Jillian.
Not pictured: Amira, Eddie, Georgia, Ivan, Leonard and Solana.

I got back from Miami today after four days of passionate conversations about the authenticity of travel (and travel writing) and whether or not Mates of State actually sing a cover of These Days and what to name our cheese babies. I was also lucky to share breakfast sandwiches, beaches, swimming, a sweet backyard pool and a bright green stuffed ferret that looked more like a jalapeño pepper than an animal with some of the best housemates I've ever had south of the Mason-Dixon line.

(I also went to We Media Miami 2009, which you can read about here and here. A huge thanks goes to them for sponsoring part of our costs to attend the conference, which challenged the way I think and communicate about new media as a member of the "Dream Generation.")

Jeremy wrote earlier about how blessed he feels to be working with Global Voices, and I want to echo his love for the organization and the amazing people that constitute it. I am so happy to have found this community, and jumping back into writing for them has made me happy in a way few things apart from the blogren do.

To my Global Voices housemates: A big giant Florida cheers! And I'm still pulling for the next GV summit to be held in Lawrence, Kansas.

Global Voices Uganda: Fire destroys Owino Market

2009-02-27T14:34:00.000-05:00

It's been a long time since I've written anything for Global Voices, but this week's fire at Owino Market prompted enough of a blogger response (and I've been sufficiently inspired by my week in Miami with ten other GV-ers) that I had to post a round-up:

A massive fire gutted Kampala's Owino Market early Wednesday morning, seriously injuring five people and destroying thousands of stalls. As many as 25,000 traders, mostly women, are estimated to have suffered losses.

Owino, also known as the Nakivubo Park Yard and St. Balikuddembe Market, is Kampala's largest market and has been at the center of several controversies involving leasing rights. Recent plans to build a new bus terminal at the Nakivubo Stadium next door have sparked anger among vendors, who will lose their space if the development proceeds as planned.

Uganda's Daily Monitor is reporting that the fire started at a hole in the wall separating the market from the stadium, and many victims are accusing the bus company that wants to build the terminal of arson. Some bloggers agree.

Read more »

Featured in this post are Even Steven, Ariaka, Ugandan Insomniac and Spartakuss.

36 Hours in K'la City

2009-02-27T12:25:00.000-05:00

Almost two years ago Josh at In an African Minute posted a guide for tourists on how to spend a weekend in Kampala. He included such highlights as bribing a fisherman to borrow his canoe for an afternoon and relaxing afterward in Kabalagala with the mixed plate, Mama's vegetarian Ethiopian special.

Things have changed since then, largely due to November 2007's Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting. Cafe Pap, Josh's Saturday afternoon pick, has lost the widescreens and upped the charge for wi-fi, allowing itself to be usurped by the delicious coffee at continential fusion restaurant La Fontaine, where an hour of wireless costs just $1.50.

Lotus Mexicanas, operated by the same couple that owns New York Pizza Kitchen in Garden City, serves up fresh strawberry margaritas and queso that rivals most Tex-Mex restaurants, if not in America, at least on the East Coast, pushing Fat Boyz to the curb.

So, at Josh's urging and because last month I thoroughly enjoyed rediscovering the city, here's the updated version of 36 Hours in K'la City:

Friday
2PM Kololo
Start your trip by exploring Kololo, one of Kampala's highest neighborhoods, on foot. Check out the Sudanese, Ethiopian, Cuban, Saudi and Congolese embassies, as well as the US Ambassador's house, and admire the many roadside garden shops and the private airstrip, where President Museveni holds many of his public speeches. If you're lucky, one of Kampala's many marathon trainees will pass you and encourage you to pick up your pace. Join them only if you're feeling particularly spry.

5PM Bubbles O'Leary's
End your walk at this Irish pub, where an afternoon beer will run you less than $2 and the wireless is unlimited and free. Two years ago Bubbles was packed with expats and had a hard-to-find entrance on a tiny side road in Kololo, but the new gigantic sign off Acacia Avenue is hard to miss, and the afternoon crowd skews Ugandan these days. Offer your neighbor a Nile Special and ask if he has a blog.

8PM La Fontaine
If you haven't satisfied your Internet fix, this charming indoor/outdoor restaurant in Kisementi, just up the road from Kololo, is one of Kampala's newest wireless hot spots. Shake hands with Jacob, the host, and order the blue cheese salad, the pumpkin soup or the fish symphony. If Manchester or Chelsea are playing, catch the game on the satellite TV at the bar.

10PM Iguana
After dinner, head next door to Iguana's second floor open air bar, where the plump couches, adventurous DJ and Kampala breezes will ease you into Kampala nightlife. Make sure to peer over the balcony at Kisementi, where late-night snack sellers and various providers of transport hawk their wares to passersby.

Saturday
10AM Good African Coffee
Brunch in Uganda is somewhat hard to come by, but this bustling coffee shop in Lugogo serves up eggs, potatoes, toast, pastries and more. Order spiced African tea and nurse the hangover you will invariably have after sampling too many of Uganda's half-liter beers.

11:30 AM Lugogo
After brunch, take a leisurely stroll through Lugogo to pick up souvenirs for friends and family back home. Banana Boat, in the Lugogo shopping center, has postcards, jewelry, woven baskets and more. It's popular with tourists, but for a more unique experience head to the wine bar in Lugogo Showgrounds and ask the owner if he has any of his own art for sale. In a few months you should be able to pick up crafts made by women throughout Uganda, courtesy of fair trade organization Awava.

1PM Taxi Tour
Hop on a public taxi taking the Nakawa-Kampala Road-Wandegeya-Kamwokya-Bukoto-Ntinda route, and ride the whole thing. It will take several hours and you'll get many stares — be prepared for the conductor to use you as a selling point, enticing passengers by promising them a seat near the muzungu. Smile and shake many hands while you get a whirlwind tour of some of Kampala's most bustling neighborhoods and busiest streets, as well as a hands-on introduction to the public transportation system.

4PM Kampala Road
Get off the taxi just a little after finishing the round trip. Stretch your legs and breathe, then make your way to 1000 Cups on Buganda Road for a much-needed cup of coffee and a chance to browse Kampala's newspapers.

7PM Lotus Mexicanas
Start your evening off right in Lotus Mexicanas' garden, where the friendly waiters will keep you well-supplied with margaritas (on the rocks or frozen) and tortilla chips. Order the enchiladas or the quesadillas and revel in all the cheese.

10PM Steak Out
Head to this open-air bar in Wandegeya to hang out with Makerere University students and, increasingly, a hearty sampling of Uganda's bloggers. Stay away from the pepper vodka.

Sunday
10AM Central Kampala
Sunday morning is Kampala's finest hour. The streets are cool and empty, making it the perfect time to explore central Kampala. Take pictures of the gigantic maribou storks lurking around Parliament, wander through the maze of streets that make up the northern part of downtown, then make your way down Kampala Road to the Old Taxi Park.

11AM Old Taxi Park
Marvel at the organized chaos and at the smorgasbord of seemingly random products being sold in the melee — everything from electric tea kettles to stilettos to sliced pineapple. Sadly, Owino Market (which Josh recommended) was burned to the ground early yesterday morning, so you won't be able to explore its vast wealth of used clothing, herbal medicines and old books.

12PM Masala Chaat House
End your weekend in Kampala at the Masala Chat House on Dewinton Road near the National Theatre, where the gentle fans and a cold lassi will revive you after the crush of Old Kampala. Enjoy an immense metal tray of masala dosas, a house speciality, as you make plans to visit again soon.

cupcakes and robots: Wednesday at We Media

2009-02-26T10:46:00.000-05:00

I'm in Miami this week for the We Media conference, which brings together "leaders and ideas shaping media, business, communication, technology, education and participation in the connected society."

Among yesterday's events, which included a video presentation by David Plouffe and a brainstorming session on the future of business, media, education, philanthropy and government (in under two hours, no less), my favorite was something called "Decoding the Culture."

Led by marketing strategist John Fischer, along with TheKnot.com founder David Liu and Darryl Perkins of the Hip Hop Caucus, Decoding the Culture started with Coca-Cola and cleaning products and ended with teledildonics.

Maybe I should explain.

Fischer's job is to make generalizations about culture — to look at human desires (like concern for the health of one's family) and connect them to trends (like the growing interest in organic food), then predict what comes next. After the most beautifully simple slide presentation I've ever seen, Fischer encouraged the participants to flip through a stack of old magazines and rip out anything we found that seemed portentous (I should add that he warned us ahead of time that culture-decoding "takes practice"). He asked that we tag each image with a post-it note describing its significance and then paste them all together in a giant collage that would eventually help us complete the statement:

Because [blank] is happening today,
[blank] will happen tomorrow.

My group's generalization started with a slew of ads emphasizing individual choice and ultra-personalization: coffee pods that come in 40 flavors! Mini cupcakes so you can put together your very own combination of half a dozen flavors! A portable digital photo printer that lets you express your Epsonality©!

And then Nathan James of the Media & Democracy Coalition found this Svedka ad:

That's right. It's a hypersexualized female robot handing you a cocktail.

This led us to a discussion of objectification, during which we wondered if robots are allowed to be gendered, whether female robots were the greatest dehumanization of women or whether, by focusing desire on inanimate objects, they represent the highest freedom. Regardless, we agreed that the robot was clearly designed to appeal to a specific desire, and the fact that it was built piece by piece means it is the perfect customization of that desire. Will personalized sexbots be the way that the current waves of individual expression and technology ultimately meet?

Because customized cupcakes are happening today, robot marriages will happen in the future.

I'm not sure if that's exactly the takeaway Fischer was hoping for, but I think the exercise is still useful. For example: technology use is both increasing and diversifying in Uganda — more people are using more and more services and applications in more and more ways. What does this trend indicate for the future of, say, politics in East Africa? What are the implications for entrepreneurs, for web developers, for ICT companies? I'm not as good at culture forecasting as Fischer (um, clearly), but I kind of wish someone would send me a copy of African Woman so I can keep the creative collage juices flowing.

jackfruit of the week (02.23.09): superheroes!

2009-02-23T15:30:00.007-05:00

Louisiana jackfruit, from the Hong Kong Food Market in Gretna, LA. Courtesy of Sonia Smith.

I'm taking a little break from the media-tech-Africa jumble that's normally Jackfruit of the Week to point you all to a hilarious/amazing/inspiring project one of my housemates is working on.

This is Chaim:

Chaim's a filmmaker:

Chaim's also a superhero:

Together, he's a superhero filmmaker. Or a filmmaking superhero (you can decide):

(Here's the part where I went, "No, really?" and Chaim went, "Yes, really." I'll give you a minute.)

Chaim isn't a Halloween superhero or a comic book superhero or a big fancy convention superhero. He's a real life superhero who spends hours and hours feeding hungry New Yorkers, cleaning up trash and building homes. He's part of a whole group of real superheroes that the New York Times profiled in 2007, including an ex-sex worker who uses martial arts to protect her former co-workers and a man who fixes leaky faucets for free. All of them — and there are hundreds throughout the world — are visible icons of community service and activism, and Chaim's documenting their story at Superheroes Anonymous:

Here's the part where I cheat a little and bring it back to Africa. Each month, Superheroes Anonymous chooses a cause to support. February's is Starvation Salvation, an effort to raise money for PASSOP, a South African non-profit that, among other things, smuggles food into Zimbabwe to feed people who need it. If you don't feel like breaking out your cape and spending a day helping your own community, think about helping PASSOP out.

Save Darfur: update

2009-02-18T18:42:00.003-05:00

Monday's post about why the International Criminal Court should hold off on an arrest warrant for al-Bashir left out a couple of interesting details: last Thursday, the New York Times reported that a warrant had already been issued, an announcement the ICC immediately refuted.

Practicing for the real thing? Accident? What do you guys think?

Hat tip: Kate Cronin-Furman at Wronging Rights

Save Darfur

2009-02-16T12:41:00.005-05:00

Why the UN Security Council should stop the ICC’s efforts to indict al-Bashir

The International Criminal Court’s recent fumbled attempt to try Congolese rebel leader Thomas Lubanga Dyilo is the latest addition to a series of reasons why an ICC indictment of Sudanese president Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir would be unwise.

Darfur refugee Sam Ouandja
Photo courtesy of hdptcar on Flickr

Lubanga’s trial, which began last month after nearly three years of delays, was marred by incompetent handling of its first witness: a former child soldier who withdrew his testimony before the end of the first day, saying he had never served in Lubanga’s army and claiming that a humanitarian aid organization had told him what to say.

The witness had been promised that his identity would be kept a secret, but he took the stand in full view of those in the courtroom, including Lubanga. After he changed his story, it emerged that pre-trial judges had prevented the prosecution from witness proofing, a two-part process where lawyers can walk witnesses through the courtroom before the trial and explain procedure, and where witnesses can practice answering questions and can re-read their own prior testimonies to refresh their memories. Though different countries have different policies on witness proofing, the international criminal tribunals for both the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda and the Special Court for Sierra Leone all chose to allow it, citing its ability to prevent incidents like the one in the Hague last month.

Things are even messier in Sudan, where the ICC announced last July that it is considering indicting al-Bashir on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes – a double first for the court, which has neither indicted a sitting head of state nor charged anyone with genocide. Moreno-Ocampo would like to charge al-Bashir with more than 300,000 deaths in Darfur and the internal displacement of nearly three million Sudanese citizens. He claims that the president ordered both Sudanese armed forces and the Janjaweed militia to attack and destroy villages belonging to three separate ethnic groups in Darfur.

Burning village painting at encampment for Darfur
Photo courtesy of futureatlas.com on Flickr

What’s happening in Darfur is despicable, and al-Bashir is undoubtedly responsible – if not for instigating the violence, at least for his failure to attempt to stop it. At the same time, the ICC’s charges, if passed (a decision is expected in November), will carry little weight. Sudan has signed but not ratified the Rome Statute, the act that created the court. This means the country is not legally bound to follow any ICC directives, raising the question of who, exactly, will waltz into Khartoum and slap handcuffs on al-Bashir. When news of the potential arrest warrant broke in July of last year, the deputy foreign minister of South Africa — a country whose post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission has been praised for its success — admitted that al-Bashir would likely never be arrested and said a warrant would not help bring peace to Darfur.

Even if al-Bashir’s arrest were probable, it would not be immediate, giving him ample time to retaliate against Darfur, something both experts and aid workers in Darfur say is likely. The day after the ICC announced its intentions to investigate al-Bashir, anti-Western riots took place in Khartoum and Darfur. It’s not unthinkable that, were the indictment to become a reality, Sudan might shut its doors to international aid organizations whose presence is still desperately needed in Darfur.

The ICC has a history of missteps in Africa. Its 2005 indictments – the court’s first – of five leaders of the Lord’s Resistance Army, a Ugandan rebel group infamous for child abduction and extreme brutality, are widely blamed for disrupting the peace process in Uganda. LRA leader Joseph Kony reportedly walked out of negotiations with the Ugandan government upon learning of the warrants, and the group, which had eased its attacks in Uganda, has since launched a renewed offensive that included the massacre of nearly 1000 Congolese civilians last December.

In 2007, Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni asked the court to suspend the indictments in favor of a local justice process, hoping to encourage Kony to sign a peace agreement. Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo refused, and Kony is still in hiding as his troops pillage their way through northeastern Congo.

Article 16 of the Rome Statute gives the UN Security Council the power to put the ICC’s decision on hold indefinitely for any reason. Both the African Union and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference have pressured the Security Council to invoke the article, provided al-Bashir agrees to make a good faith effort toward peace in Darfur. Suspending the prosecution, if only temporarily, would avoid increased bloodshed and would allow the ICC to work through its trial issues with Lubanga before embarking on yet another case. If the ICC’s handling of the Uganda and Democratic Republic of the Congo cases are any indication of the court’s ability to carry out their mandate in the best interests of African conflicts’ victims, the Security Council should comply.

Crossposted on The Morningside Post and The Huffington Post (albeit with a disappointing typo in the title)

NYT aids in failed plan to help Americans understand the LRA conflict

2009-02-07T11:50:00.005-05:00

The front page of today's New York Times proclaims that the U.S. Aided a Failed Plan to Rout Ugandan Rebels.

A couple of things:

1) Maybe I'm just being crotchety and pessimistic, but is it really news that the United States has been assisting the Ugandan military in its less-than-successful attempts to confront the LRA? Operation Iron Fist comes to mind.

2) The article claims, "The Ugandan government has tried coaxing Mr. Kony out. But the International Criminal Court in The Hague has indicted him on charges of crimes against humanity, and he has long insisted the charges be dropped." We've talked about this before on Jackfruity, but the ICC didn't just swoop in against the government's wishes and hand out arrest warrants like concert flyers. Museveni referred the case to them.

jackfruit of the week (02.05.09) - TED

2009-02-05T10:10:00.000-05:00

Bungee jumping Jinja jackfruit, courtesy of Mr. King

TED is one of my favorite things in the world: a blend of technology, entertainment and design (hence the acronym) plus a hefty dose of international affairs, science and the arts. Case in point: a talk on African fractals by ethno-mathematician Ron Eglash. I could get lost for hours (and have) in the twenty-minute video presentations on everything from the mystery behind Lost to the art of letter writing.

How fortunate, then, that TED 2009 is this week. Over 50 speakers — artists, scientists, musicians, entrepreneurs and one aerialist — are congregating in California, sharing their ideas and basking in their combined brilliance. You can follow along with live broadcasts or check out the TED Fellows blog.

three degrees of joseph kony

2009-01-30T13:37:00.007-05:00

Remember that game, the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon? Where any actor can be linked to Bacon via his or her film roles?

Turns out you can play the same game with Joseph Kony. Observe:

Degrees of Joseph Kony: 0
Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord's Resistance Army.

Degrees of Joseph Kony: 1
Okot Odhiambo, Kony's right-hand man and second-in-command of the Lord's Resistance Army. Odhiambo announced earlier this week that he plans to surrender, citing serious wounds received in a battle with the Ugandan military.

Degrees of Joseph Kony: 2
Ben Simon, the Agence France Presse reporter whom Odhiambo called to say he was turning himself in.

Degrees of Joseph Kony: 3
Me, the blogger who met Ben over Ethiopian food and later discussed the Aga Khan's role at the Daily Monitor with him.

Hat tip: Kristin Antin

history and hindsight

2009-01-29T21:40:00.010-05:00

As part of a side project for a professor of mine, I've spent much of this week buried in New York University's Tamiment Library, combing through the archives of Picture Magazine, a leftist newspaper published daily in New York from 1940-1948.

Today I relived the entire Allied invasion of Europe, including the Italian surrender, the takeover of Rome, D-Day and the liberation of Paris. When I go back on Saturday, the Soviets will reach Auschwitz.

It's strange to read through these archives, day by day, already knowing what will happen: knowing that the first mention of "forced labor" in Poland in late 1941 will eventually lead to a 1944 photo essay that includes a picture of a pile of shoes discarded by Jewish gas chamber victims; anticipating American troops landing at Normandy. Reading brave articles that claim that the war will be over by the year's end — articles published in 1943 and in 1944. Knowing that Jews were proposing a Holocaust memorial before American newspapers were even reporting Rabbi Stephen Wise's first press conference on the genocide.

(According to some accounts, it took almost two years for reports of the Holocaust to be taken seriously, largely because they were difficult to corroborate. I wonder what things would have been like had Ushahidi existed?)

It's a lot of history to take in in seven hours, and my head is spinning with the thought that, with the help of microfilm, I condensed 60 million deaths into a day's work.

uganda blogger happy hour, redux

2009-01-28T20:34:00.002-05:00

This month's (impromptu) Uganda Blogger Happy Hour was nothing short of perfect. It was the two-year anniversary of the first UBHH. Rev, who's been a lovable yet aggravating presence since the very beginning, was on his very best behavior (this unfortunately means I have very little to write about). And, proof that the blogren are continually growing, there were new faces. Like I said, perfect.

Nevender and Antipop have considerably more detailed round-ups, and Dee has photos. Before you head over there, though, I want to point you to Solomon, who has a list of Very Important Questions concerning this year's Uganda Best of Blog Awards. This year we're introducing prizes including free hosting, your very own domain name, and possibly pizza — go check it out and let us know what you think.

Last thing: earlier this month I wrote about why I blog about Africa. In my wave of Uganda-inspired love, I neglected to obey the rules of the meme and tag other bloggers. Here goes:

Dee

Gay Uganda

Mr. King

Rev — I know you just closed your blog, but surely there's room for one more post?

Tumwijuke

ugandan bloglove

2009-01-23T08:35:00.005-05:00

Voting opened yesterday for the 2009 Bloggies, the "Web's longest-running blog awards," and of the five blogs in the running for Best African Weblog, two originated in Uganda.

Appfrica has its finger on the pulse of African IT, including podcasts from last December's Facebook Dev Garage in Kampala and an interview with Blogren Superstar Benge Solomon King. It's also available in Luganda.

Scarlett Lion left Kampala last month to move to Liberia, but her site has been an integral part of the Ugandan blogging scene since 2007, and her archives hold a wealth of reflections and photography from all over the country.

Voting lasts until Monday, February 2, so head over soon and give your fellow blogren some love.

jackfruit of the week (01.21.09)

2009-01-21T13:31:00.008-05:00

Jackfruit on Long Bien Bridge from Hanoi Mark on Flickr

I'm back in New York after a whirlwind trip to Kampala, where I communed with the blogren (more later) and waxed nostalgic. I got in last night and hit the ground running today with a lecture on Pareto efficiency, delivered by the son of a French-Argentine football player. I love New York.

The new semester is starting for lots of people, including my friend and former blogret* Josh Goldstein, who together with Patrick Meier is teaching a class on Digital Democracy at Tufts University. You can follow along with the course, which covers a blend of digital activism, political theory and media studies, on the Digital Democracy wiki or the @digidemocracy Twitter feed.

In other news, Barack Obama:

Courtesy of Ryan Schuette, whose affinity for Ugandan Mexican food and willingness to meet me anywhere in the city to drink out of cups made K'la City as much like home this time it was the last.

*blogren, singular, male.

jetlag and misconceptions

2009-01-18T23:50:00.004-05:00

On a flight this morning from New York to Chicago, I was seated next to a couple heading to visit their son. It was snowing, and I mentioned that I hadn't yet seen snow in New York this winter because I'd been traveling so much. They asked where I was coming from, and when I told them I'd just been in Uganda, the man laughed and said, "You must be hungry."

I didn't know how to tell him that I'd eaten better in Kampala than I do in New York — Greek salads, macaroni and cheese, malai kofta, apple pie. I didn't know how to erase this image of Africa he seemed to have, where people scramble for the few grains of rice that drop off a passing World Food Program truck or where babies bathe, if they bathe, in bracken water collected in a filthy ditch.

It's not that he's entirely wrong, which I think is why I have trouble describing Uganda to someone who's never been there. Parts of the country, those scarred by conflict or disease, provide perfect footage for World Vision's sponsor-a-child commercials: children sitting naked in the dust, huge families crammed into too-small huts, sons lost to war and daughters to malaria.

Kampala skyline, via peprice on Flickr

Homeless woman in New York, via dgphilli on Flickr

At the same time, Kampala is a bustling city, constantly under construction, where you can procure everything from a new Land Rover to a margarita. I am frustrated that people cannot seem to hold both these images in their minds, the same way that they somehow reconcile urban homelessness with Trump Towers and the Chrysler Building.

Even those who have seen both sides of Africa struggle with this, with how to present the realities of extreme poverty and shiny new Mexican restaurants without either feeding stereotypes or wrongly glossing over the problems that do exist. Life in much of Africa is still a struggle for existence, a struggle against hunger and sickness and violence. The same thing can be said of much of America: though civil wars may not regularly threaten our society, gang wars do (Rev told me this week that he's afraid I'll die in a drive-by shooting), as do food shortages and a lack of affordable medical care. In both cases, though, glittering skyscrapers and fancy hotels make up a regular part of the landscape. So why is one dichotomy so much more acceptable than they other?

I wish I had known how to explain this to this couple. I'm not sure how much good it would have done, though — as we were getting off the plane, they started harassing an elderly man who was having trouble getting out of his seat, blaming him for holding up the line. "Old people should stay home," the woman muttered to her husband. It is perhaps not the best sign of my character that, in my exhausted, jetlagged state, I seriously considered kicking both of them.

why i blog about africa

2009-01-09T09:31:00.000-05:00

Last November Abidjan-based blogger Théophile Kouamouo started the "Why I Blog About Africa" meme. Global Voices posted a round-up of responses from both Francophone and Anglophone bloggers, and now I've been tagged by Hash at White African. So, here goes:

I write about Africa because of the boda-boda driver I had earlier this week, who pleaded, "You add me 1000, you see I have no shoes!" and then told me I could come to Masaka with him and be his sister and his wife (exactly how this would work was unclear).

I write about Africa because two years ago, when I would come to Bubbles O'Leary's Irish Pub in Kololo to use the free wireless, it was full of muzungus. Now, of the seven people in here with laptops, I am the only white one.

Sometimes I write about Africa because it is the only thing I can do: when I am angry that the HIV infection rate is rising in conjunction with the failures of American foreign policy or when I am ashamed of how little I understand this world.

Sometimes I write about Africa because it is funny: when I am pursued by a love-stricken boda-boda driver or when the Aga Khan seems omnipresent.

But mostly, I write about Africa because I am afraid I will forget. I am afraid that if this blog is not constantly on my mind, even when I am not writing, then I will forget my neighbor Moses, who gave me groundnuts and did Tae-Bo with me on my porch, things that bound us together as friends. I am afraid I will forget a dying communist and heated conversations on a balcony far above the city and the taste of warm Pilsner in the darkness of a Gulu night.

It sounds, even now as I am sitting surrounded by the smell of Kampala, melodramatic and romanticized. Still, for me, blogging about Africa means that a part of me is eternally connected to that place: that even if I am thousands of miles away from the continent, part of me will always exist there, just as part of it will always exist with me.

Impromptu BHH

2009-01-07T03:43:00.003-05:00

Blogren: I'm back. I got in on Sunday and have been successfully avoiding ffene since.

I know happy hour usually takes place the last week of the month, but I'd love to see you all. Dee suggested that I call an impromptu, mid-month reunion. How does next Thursday, January 15 at 7:00pm sound? Mateo's?

Hope to see you there.

xo,
JF

In search of a few good journalists

2009-01-02T15:00:00.003-05:00

I leave today for two weeks in Kampala, a trip I've been looking forward to since I left Uganda 15 months ago. While there, I'll be doing research for a professor at Columbia University as part of my master's program in Economic and Political Development.

Training session through BBC's Communicating Justice program

The research includes a survey of African journalists in Ghana, Nigeria and Uganda who have received training in business/economic reporting. The goal is to contribute to a better understanding of the effect that journalism training has had on the media climate in these countries and on the careers of the journalists who did the training. We will share our work with the NGO and donor community, particularly the Revenue Watch Institute, to help them develop future journalism training programs and improve the ones they have.

I've contacted many of the blogren directly to ask if they know of anyone who has had substantial training in economics/business journalism (at least 4 weeks) from places like the Reuters Foundation, BBC Trust, Cardiff, IIJ or ICFJ who might be willing to be interviewed. I have a great list of names, but I wanted to throw out an open call:

If you or anyone you know is interested in participating, leave a comment below or e-mail me.

jackfruit of the week (12.31.08), New Year's Edition

2008-12-31T09:19:00.000-05:00

Birthday jackfruit via Jill York. She notes that "it's a disney world jackfruit, grown in epcot's 'living with the land.'"

I closed out 2006 with a list of predictions for 2007, including the death of Museveni from gout (still waiting) and the discovery of Salim Saleh's closet shrine to Jay-Z (less probable, though not entirely impossible). Those were strange times.

I blogged less this year than in 2006 or 2007 (though I did provide you with some truly awe-inspiring Artocarpus heterophyllus), an unfortunate casualty of leaving Kampala for Kansas and, now, New York. I'm looking forward to landing at Entebbe Airport in five days, picking up a copy of the Daily Monitor and seeing what new venture the Aga Khan has planned in my absence.

Until then, I'm hesitant to predict anything. Instead, I offer hope for a swift end to the recent LRA uprising and apologies that I never got around to writing my reviews for the 2008 Africa Reading Challenge. May 2009 be a better year all around.

Twitter Diplomacy

2008-12-30T11:19:00.004-05:00

San Francisco Demonstration in Solidarity with Gaza, from isa e

Unless your holiday season involves complete and total hibernation, you've probably heard about this weekend's attacks in Gaza. More than 350 Palestinians and four Israelis have been killed so far, and neither Israel nor Hamas shows any sign of backing down.

A few minutes ago I got an e-mail from Jill York announcing that the Israeli Consulate in New York will be holding a press conference this afternoon to field questions about Israel's offensive. Slight twist: they'll be holding it on Twitter, where they set up an account yesterday.

Anyone can submit questions to @israelconsulate, and David Saranga, Consul of Media and Public Affairs in New York, will do his best to answer, either via Twitter or by posting a link to the Consulate's blog.

Israel isn't alone in using Twitter to communicate with the public; the United States is getting some Web 2.0 diplomacy action as well. Last week Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Colleen Graffy published an editorial in the Washington Post on her own usage of Twitter to connect to people in the countries she visits. She writes:

Not that long ago, communicating diplomat-to-diplomat was enough. Agreements were reached behind closed doors and announced in a manner and degree that suited the schedule and desires of the governments involved, not the general population. In fact, the public was by and large an afterthought. But the proliferation of democracies and the emergence of the round-the-clock media environment has brought an end to those days. Now, governments must communicate not only with their people but also with foreign audiences, including through public diplomacy.
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In short, public diplomacy is the art of communicating a country's policies, values and culture. If diplomats want to engage effectively with people, we first need to listen, then connect and then communicate. In the part of the world that I know and cover, Europe and Eurasia, most people are tuned in to television, and the younger generation is using text messages and the Internet. So, we need to be there, too.

Graffy's tweets tend toward the personal (Need to get a new laptop. Have always had a PC. Friends are telling me to get a Mac. I'm scared. Have others survived the transition?), while the Israeli Consulate has focused so far on the upcoming press conference. Still, both efforts represent genuine ventures on the part of government representatives to engage one-on-one with people around the world.

Related:

The Global Twittersphere Discusses Gaza, from Jill York on Global Voices
Tweets tagged with #Gaza and #gazawarofwords follow the attacks and the media bias surrounding them, respectively
Dipnote, tweets from the U.S. State Department's blog

World AIDS Day: HIV+ bloggers around the world

2008-12-01T16:27:00.002-05:00

To commemorate World AIDS Day 2008, the Global Voices team has created a Google map of HIV-positive bloggers around the world. Africa only has two entries so far, one in the DRC and one in Botswana. The map is a work in progress, so if you know of anyone in Uganda (or elsewhere), please email Global Voices Public Health Editor, Juhie Bhatia.

View Larger Map

it's just you: jackfruit of the week (11.30.08)

2008-11-25T10:55:00.011-05:00

mr. and the jackfruit from meaduva on Flickr

For more jackfruit pictures, check out all the Jackfruit of the Week posts.

For those of us who have spent long hours in front of blank computer screens, watching the empty status bar at the bottom of our browser windows, hoping to see a tiny increment of movement that would indicate our desired site was finally loading: wait no more.

A fellow GV-er has just sent out a list of three simples sites that will tell you whether it's worth your time to keep anxiously biting your knuckles and hitting refresh:

Down for everyone or just me? will tell you whether everyone is having trouble accessing a site, or whether it's just you. Blunt? Yes. Helpful? Absolutely.

Notify me when it's up! and Ding It's Up! both allow you to enter a URL and be notified when the site in question is operating again. Both sites will send an e-mail alert; Ding will text you or send an @reply on Twitter and also offers the option to be notified when a site goes down — a nice perk for web developers or site owners.

The sites were developed in response to the Twitter fail whale, but they clearly have a number of possible applications. Pretty snazzy.

Web 2.0 by farmers, for farmers

2008-11-24T10:23:00.003-05:00

The Busoga Rural Open Source and Development Initiative is a local Ugandan non-profit that uses digital technology, including a blog, SMS and online forums and audio files in English and local languages, to help farmers in Uganda share information about health, agriculture and education. Check it out:

via Kabissa

jackfruit of the week (11.19.08)

2008-11-19T08:15:00.001-05:00

Authentic Ugandan jackfruit via Tumwi

In all the election excitement and liveblogging frenzy, I missed a week. I'm making it up to you with a trip to Uganda.

That's right, blogren. I'm coming back for two weeks in January, and if there's not already a Uganda Bloggers' Happy Hour planned (I'm looking at you and you and you), I'll throw one.

In other news: elephants.

Elephants are cool in my book: big, adorable, seemingly genial. Except they're not so friendly when they're stomping over your crops, exacting revenge. Revenge! Who knew elephants were vengeful? (Even worse: drunken vengeful elephants.)

Apparently Ethan Zuckerman, who wrote last week about the perils of coming face-to-face with a vindictive pachyderm:

It’s a good idea to know whether elephants are enroute to your farm as one elephant can eat a year’s crops in a single evening. If you know that elephants are on the way, you can stand in your fields with torches and chase the animals off.

What you need (besides torches and the ability to outrun an angry elephant), Ethan says, is to know the elephant hordes are coming. Here's where cool technology comes into play: Kenyan hackers are turning GSM phones into tracking systems. An organization called Save the Elephants has put GSM-powered collars on the animals. When the elephants cross a virtual fence separating them from humans, the collar sends a warning to villagers in the area via SMS.

Even better: since the villagers know they're coming, they can use spotlights instead of torches and shouting to herd the elephants back to their home, a 90,000-acre conservancy.

In case any of you thought this whole mobile phone activism thing was just for politics geeks: remember the elephants.

The Internet President

2008-11-17T01:10:00.003-05:00

Crossposted on The Morningside Post.

Image from Desmond Blog

Barack Obama has been called, by everyone from Columbia Law School professor Eben Moglen to media expert Jeff Jarvis, "the first candidate elected by the internet." By all accounts, online fundraising was a major factor in propelling Obama to the top, and his new Change.gov site lets Americans share their vision for the next administration.

Now, as the Presidential transition is in process, Obama's team is taking Internet awareness one step further. If you're interested in working in a top position in the White House, the New York Times reports that you'd better be willing to divulge your blog, your Facebook profile, and "all aliases or ‘handles’ you have used to communicate on the Internet" in the past decade.

I gave it a shot, and realized my list would include not just profiles on sites like Facebook and LinkedIn but also accounts with Delicious, Twitter, BigSight, FriendFeed, Dopplr, Metafilter and Last.fm (and an unfortunate experiment with Xanga at age 14). Will a recently-loved song on Favtape become a "possible source of embarrassment" to me, me family, or the president-elect? Will a two-year-old blog post of awkward photos of George Bush seem less sarcastic than fawning, casting me into the ranks of suspected Republicans?

I don't have to give up as much as the Big O himself, though. (Side note: calling the president-elect "the Big O" will likely embarrass me, my family and Obama himself. This is the part where I kiss my Secretary of State aspirations goodbye.) Due to security concerns, Obama's being asked to surrender his beloved BlackBerry before stepping into the Oval Office.

yes.

2008-11-05T22:08:00.001-05:00

from 30reasons.org

Globally liveblogging the American elections

2008-11-04T10:37:00.005-05:00

As I mentioned last week, Columbia University's international affairs blog, The Morningside Post, is hosting a global liveblog of the election returns today.

Columbia professors David Epstein, Andrew Gelman, Brigitte Nacos and Sharyn O'Halloran will join bloggers from the United States, United Kingdom, France, Singapore, Germany, Mexico, Japan, Russia, India, Switzerland, Canada and Brazil to comment as results come in and to offer opinions and analysis on the election's domestic and international implications. We'll also be posting election-related photos, videos and polls throughout the day.

Stop by any time between now and midnight EST (8:00 am Wednesday, Kampala time) to add your thoughts.

Update: For even more international liveblogging, check out the Voices Without Votes coverage of global reactions to the election returns.

jackfruit of the week (10.29.08): the U.S. elections

2008-10-27T22:03:00.000-04:00

"Too close to a jackfruit for comfort" from the LOCAL on Flickr.

My sentiments exactly.

In six days, Americans will be rid of George Bush.

I'm pausing to let that sink in. It Sounds. So. Good.

Elections haven't always been a big thing for me. Eight years ago I failed the AP U.S. History test because my teacher spent an entire semester discussing hanging chads instead of Eisenhower and the Space Race. Four years ago I jumped on the Dean bandwagon, supported Kerry and almost stopped talking to my boyfriend, who voted for Bush. Unlike some more liberal friends of mine, though, I didn't care enough to show up to class on November 5, 2004 wearing this shirt:

We've managed (albeit barely) to survive the past four years, and this time around, I'm paying attention. And it's not just me — the entire world is paying attention:

Martin Perez lives in Parañaque, a suburb of Manila, an ocean and a few time zones from the United States. But when he gets up at 5 a.m. to get ready for work, the high school teacher goes online to read the latest news in the U.S. presidential race, study poll numbers, watch YouTube videos — and blog about the McCain-Obama showdown.

"The Election That Has the Whole World Blogging", Washington Post

Contributing to the global symphony of opinions is The Morningside Post, which is hosting a liveblog of the election returns. From noon to midnight EST on November 4, visit the site to see running commentary from international affairs and public policy students at ten different universities worldwide, from São Paulo to Singapore.

Also: if you're an American and you don't vote, may all of these wishes come true for you.

Sam Gregory of Witness: Video and Human Rights

2008-10-22T12:06:00.004-04:00

Sam Gregory, Program Director of the video-based human rights organization Witness, is in a class of mine today, talking about the use of video for human rights advocacy. Questions of effectiveness, ethics and accessibility below:

jackfruit of the week (10.22.08)

2008-10-22T00:14:00.002-04:00

Jackfruit Ganesha via Ruchii

Some research I'm doing on crowdsourcing in crisis is starting to take (nebulous, uncertain) shape via my Delicious account. Some highlights:

The "crisis mapping" section of iRevolution, the blog of Fletcher School PhD candidate Patrick Meier, is a glorious treasure trove of histories, plans and possibilities for digital mapping based on crowdsourced information in conflict early warning and prevention systems. Meier is writing his dissertation about the effects of the information revolution on social resistance movements in authoritarian societies. In other words, I would very much like to buy him dinner.

FrontlineSMS isn't exactly new (I first heard about it in 2007, when it was being used to help monitor the Nigerian elections), but the more I read about mobile phones, the more excited I get. Frontline allows anyone with a laptop and a phone to create a "central communications hub" that can use text messages to communicate with large groups of people: to send out an alert and get feedback on a specific crisis situation, for example, or to aggregate information during a natural disaster. The less altruistic could use it to organize flashmobs.

Later today some friends and I are going to help advocate for Frontline by becoming an icon for them. Interested? Take a picture of yourself with your arms above your head, imitating the Frontline logo, and sent it to photo@frontlinesms.com with your name and country. They'll put it in a slideshow that will be used to generate awareness and support.

FrontlineSMS supporter Erik Hersman becomes a Frontline icon

In other news: this week I was named one of the top 45 female bloggers in Africa by Afrigator. I'm happy that two blogs about Uganda are included, but I'm sad not to see Tumwijuke, Antipop or Magintu on the list. If you're not a member of Afrigator, head over and register to submit your blog and to see what's happening all over the African blogosphere.

That's all for this week. Coming up next Wednesday: plans for quadricontinental liveblogging of the US presidential election returns at The Morningside Post.

jackfruit of the week (10.15.08): blog action day 2008

2008-10-15T23:13:00.000-04:00

Artocarpus heterophyllus via Russian in Brazil on Flickr

Midterms are kicking in this week, and I'm trying to juggle six classes, SIPA's blog, Bayit life (including a three-hour dinner in our sukkah yesterday), research responsibilities and some other stuff I've probably forgotten. Among the fifteen tips my econ professor gave us for taking the midterm:

What to do if you freeze. I hope it does not happen, but rarely it happens. Let me know (I will be around). Leave the classroom for 5 minutes instead of staring aimlessly at the exam paper for 30 minutes. The bright side of freezing is that it happens only once. I have never had a student who froze twice.

Good to know there's a bright side of freezing during a three-hour test. In other, less panic-attack inducing news, today is Blog Action Day, an annual event geared toward getting bloggers around the world to focus for one day on a topic of global importance. This year's topic is poverty, and everyone from TechCrunch to my mom and dad has gotten in on the action.

Much of what I do at Columbia on a daily basis involves poverty, whether the discussion revolves around human rights or global imbalances or gender. A favorite topic of students and professors alike is microfinance, a system that involves giving loans to those with little or no credit, often to help them start or maintain a business. Loans can be given by institutions that specialize in providing financial services to the poor, by regular banks, or by you through organizations like Kiva, which matches prospective lenders to entrepreneurs around the world and lets both parties share information and track progress online. Another hot topic is fair trade, a movement to ensure that workers in the developing world — like coffee farmers and artisans — are given a fair price for the goods they produce.

In northern Uganda, an organization my friend Halle started is using fair trade to boost available job opportunities for women in northern Uganda. Called One Mango Tree, the organization works with women tailors in Gulu and two nearby displaced persons camps, marketing and selling their products in the United States and online. The women are trained by existing tailors and paid fairly for their work, and OMT uses part of the profits to equip them with bicycles and send their children to school.

I'm a huge fan of the work OMT is doing, as well as a proud owner of several of their initial product prototypes, including an early version of the original and the yoga mat bag. If you're looking for a way to help tackle poverty, why not do it by partnering with some amazing, talented women? Check out One Mango Tree for more about their history, goals and products.

jackfruit of the week (10.08.08)

2008-10-08T15:45:00.002-04:00

Jackfruit closeup courtesy of aldenhg on Flickr

I ran into a friend of mine last Thursday. "I woke up this morning feeling like today was a holiday," she said, with obvious glee at the prospect of watching Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin humiliate herself yet again on national television.

I was going to make this the Palin Edition of Jackfruit of the Week, commenting snarkily on pieces like this:

The problem with Ms. Palin’s candidacy is that John McCain might actually win this election, and then if something terrible happened, the country could be left with little more than an exclamation point as president.

(from Palin's Alternate Universe)

And this:

Yet surely, more than most of us, politicians need to be able to think on their feet, to have a brain that works quickly and rationally under pressure. Do we really want to be led by someone who, when asked a straightforward question, flails around like an undergraduate who stayed up all night boozing instead of studying for the exam?

(from The sentences of Sarah Palin, diagrammed)

Then I ran across this:

Right now we’re in the middle of the Days of Awe, the stretch of time between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, when Jews are asking forgiveness. Not of God, but of each other. Because God can’t forgive you for the mean things you’ve done to other people. Only the people you’ve harmed can forgive you.

Good common sense.

I always enjoy it, this forgiving. Also the mulling and the brooding. I like going back over my year and thinking about what I might’ve done differently. And this year, I find that I owe an unexpected apology to someone I don’t even know.

Sarah Palin, I’m sorry—

Really, I mean this sincerely. I do.

...

Maybe you have wild post-partum swings. Maybe your other kids are feeling neglected. I bet there are days when you question the choices you’ve made. That’s not easy, I know. It’s hard to be a woman in the world today, hard to balance family and career. Hard to sacrifice the privacy of loved ones for a public life.

And even though you’ve chosen the spotlight, and even though reporters have the right to discuss your record, that doesn’t mean I need to be talking smack about another working mother’s personal life. You don’t need to be what I talk about at dinner. Or blog about cruelly.

See, I really do want to believe in hope. I want things to change. And part of that is wanting you and John, and Barack and Joe to rise above the mudslinging. I don’t want to hear about Bristol any more than I want to hear about Barack’s madrassa. But if I’m going to cross my fingers and say a prayer and expect YOU not to engage in Lashon Hara—

Well, change starts at home, right?

(from Forgiving: An open apology to Sarah Palin. Really.)

Even though I enjoyed the first two pieces — I laughed out loud while reading them and promptly sent them to friends — the last one made a deeper impression on me. L'shanah tovah, Sarah.

Hunger turns to anger: a priority of the United Nations?

2008-10-01T17:49:00.007-04:00

Tonight the United Nations Studies Program at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs is hosting a panel on the world food crisis titled "Hunger turns to anger: a priority of the United Nations?" Jeffrey Sachs, UN Under-Secretary-General Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, UN Under-Secretary-General of Humanitarian Affairs Sir John Holmes, and International Federation of Agricultural Producers President Ajaykumar Manubhai Vashee are presenting. I've been tapped to cover the event for The Morningside Post, but I'll also be liveblogging below:

jackfruit of the week (09.25.08)

2008-09-25T18:17:00.000-04:00

These gigantic jackfruits are... gigantic. Hat tip: Jillian York.

I've been reading a lot about ethnic conflict this week to prepare for two presentations I'm giving next month, but rather than quote something, I'd like to point you to two related links that came my way today:

Never Again in Sri Lanka is a set of video clips in English, Sinhala and Tamil that commemorate the 25th anniversary of the 1983 anti-Tamil riots in Sri Lanka. The videos were originally broadcast on Sri Lankan television and have been collected and preserved online as part of the effort to document the Sri Lankan civil war, one of the longest-running ethnic conflicts in the world. (Original link from GV: Sri Lanka: Anti-Tamil riot videos.)

Resolve Uganda is hosting a petition to President Bush, thanking him for meeting with President Museveni this week at the UN and asking him to continue to work for peace and justice in northern Uganda. The meeting and the petition are in response to a recent spate of LRA attacks in the Democratic Republic of Congo that have caused at least 75,000 people to flee. UNICEF is estimating that 90 children were abducted.

jackfruit of the week (09.17.08)

2008-09-17T15:00:00.000-04:00

Baby jackfruit via Don Fulano

This week I was offered a spot on the editorial staff The Morningside Post, Columbia University's international affairs blog. I'll be working a lot with outreach and video, as well as helping to roll out a shiny new design that will better showcase the variety of our content. I'll also be blogging about media, technology and development (and maybe a celebrity or two). Meanwhile, I urge you to check out the wealth of archived posts on everything from climate change to Cambodia.

Jon Gosier wonders why Barcamp Uganda focused on selling, rather than discussing, new technology: "Barcamp Kampala was organized by myself (an American), a Dutch person, a Brit and a New Zealander with help from three Ugandan students. Thus it definitely had tons of Western influences. Alternatively, Barcamp Uganda was organized for and by Ugandans. Maybe the idea of Barcamp is a western thing that isn’t relevant to Ugandans?"

And lastly, another zinger from Vijay Prashad's Darker Nations, which I mentioned last week: "The darker world contributed greatly to the development of Europe, and based on this evidence it is clear that the invisible hand is white."

jackfruit of the week (09.10.08)

2008-09-10T16:06:00.004-04:00

Over the past two years I've experimented with a feature on this blog called "Jackfruit of the week," most recently last November. It's usually a picture of (what else?) a jackfruit accompanied by some of the most intriguing things I've read or seen that week, similar to Chris Blattman's Links I liked posts.

For the next two years, I'm going to try to make JOTW a regular occurrence by basing it on things I'm reading or watching for class. My degree is in Economic and Political Development with a focus in (new) media, so most of the things I share here will be vaguely related to things like Internet and political development, but there might be the occasional piece of statistics humor. Without further ado:

This week's jackfruit comes from my friend and colleague Jillian York. It was spotted, believe it or not, in Canada.

The Machine is Us/ing Us, a video by Kansas State University professor Mike Wesch, explores the implications of Web 2.0 in our world. Wesch has spent significant time in Papua New Guinea, observing the introduction of new media to a society and how technology impacts culture.

Vijay Prashad's Darker Nations explores post-colonial countries and traces the rise and (he claims) fall of the Third World. The first sentence of the introduction claims, "The Third World was not a place. It was a project."

BlogDay 2008: Eating in the City

2008-08-31T22:23:00.009-04:00

I moved to New York earlier this month to start grad school at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. I've been neglecting most things online during the process of packing/traveling/unpacking/buying lots of stuff that I already own but that didn't make the ruthless weight and space requirements for the move and was consequently left in Kansas.

I've settled in to my new home, made it through the first week of orientation (including 14 hours of the euphemistically titled "Math Camp") and procured Internet access. Now that I'm online again, I realize it's BlogDay 2008.

Hash at White African posted a list of 5 great African blogs, which I wholly recommend that you check out (disclosure: one of them is Jackfruity). I'm going to take a geographically minded cue and, in honor of my new home, share a handful of NYC blogs.

Whenever I travel (or move), I try to check out a few local blogs before I go. I get a more well-rounded sense of what's happening in a particular place than I do from following local news media, and I like to see what the hot blog topics are. In New York, one of the hottest topics is food. So, showcasing the city's array of amazing treats, here are my top five NYC food blogs (in no particular order):

Midtown Lunch is what I read when I pretend I am a successful working New Yorker instead of a woefully indebted graduate student. It's cheap and dirty and has a list of food types down the righthand side that includes Peruvian, Scandinavian and Filipino — options I didn't even know I had.

The Amateur Gourmet makes me want to travel to boroughs afar for Senegalese coffee and follow the Dessert Truck all over town. This article on lox had me fascinated. I read it twice and have planned a trip to the Lower East Side to sample the twelve different kinds available at Russ & Daughters. Mmmm, lox.

Serious Eats is big on food events like street fairs and falafel eating contests: cheap foodie fun for those of us who can't afford $300 truffle dinners in Midtown.

The City Sweet Tooth is a blog by comic artist Abby Denson. She reviews New York's best desserts in comic form,
like this neon masterpiece about gelato and this one about ice cream and dragons. So far she's covered mostly frozen confections, but the concept's engaging, and I'm hoping as the weather gets colder she'll start blogging about warm treats as well.

Reading The Girl Who Ate Everything is a bit like talking to your crazy funny happy hipster friend. In other words, it's great. And the photography is fantastic. Yay!

Sylvester & Abramz on BoingBoing

2008-08-03T17:08:00.005-04:00

My favorite Ugandan hip hop/breakdancing duo made BoingBoing yesterday as part of a post on Diamonds in the Rough, a documentary about Uganda's awesome socially and politically active hip hop scene.

The film has been out for a while, and its director, Brett Mazurek, was profiled in 2006 by UGPulse. The site also has an excellent introduction to East African hip hop (Uganda's at the bottom) and an interview with Sylvester & Abramz, whose song Lemerako is featured in the film's trailer.

Check it out:

Sudan and the ICC: please change my mind

2008-07-17T14:48:00.004-04:00

I spent yesterday morning collaborating with the tireless John Liebhardt, the multitalented Elia Varela Serra and a handful of other Global Voices authors on a global round-up of bloggers' reactions to the International Criminal Court's recommendation that Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir be indicted on multiple counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Now that I've read through other bloggers' reactions, I'm ready to add my own thoughts.

Warning: this is the worst kind of blog post, born of a late-night argument that no one won, the self-serving kind that blames and complains without offering any solutions. It's been one of those days.

I have a love-hate relationship with the ICC that's mostly hate (caveat: it's so easy to criticize, sitting here on my couch with my coffee). It sounds great in (surface-level) theory: an international tribunal established to prosecute criminals of the worst sort. It's noble. It appears to fulfill the world's moral responsibility to victims of large-scale evil. It's an attempt to atone for the Holocaust, Rwanda, the Balkans and all those other times we said "Never Again." The ICC does all it can under its mandate, and it works hard to identify the worst human rights abuses in the world and find enough evidence to support a case against them. In practice, though...eeesh.

When the ICC issued arrest warrants for Lord's Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony and four of his top commanders in July 2005...nothing happened. Well, two of them died, but I don't think that's related. Kony demanded immunity, President Museveni backpedaled like crazy and human rights activists in northern Uganda labeled the warrants an obstacle to peace. Three years later, negotiations are still stalled, Kony and his two remaining commanders are still in the bush, and despite the headlines every once in a while claiming peace is imminent, the LRA and the government aren't any closer to signing an agreement than they were five (or ten) years ago.

Is what's happening in Darfur despicable? Absolutely. Is al-Bashir responsible? Without question. But what purpose are the ICC's charges going to serve? As I said in the Global Voices round-up, Sudan has signed but not ratified the Rome Statue, the treaty that created the ICC. This means they're not legally bound to follow any ICC directives, so who, exactly, is going to waltz into Khartoum and slap handcuffs on al-Bashir? And if someone does, who's going to govern Sudan while he's sitting in The Hague? The likelihood is that any move the ICC makes is going to make al-Bashir even more angry, and that anger will probably be taken out in Darfur.

So what can we do? At the risk of sounding like a Kaplanite, I don't know if there's anything we can do. If anyone feels up to writing a rebuttal, à la this guest post in response to my earlier, misinformed rant about the Juba peace talks, please do. I'd love to be corrected by someone who has a much better knowledge of the workings of the ICC and the situation in Sudan.

Update: For an elegant, researched critique of the International Criminal Court in Africa, check out "Africa's unjust deserts" by Stephanie Nolen, writing for The Globe and Mail.

In defense of the blogren

2008-07-17T12:10:00.004-04:00

Glenna at Uganda's Scarlett Lion posted yesterday, wondering why the majority of Ugandan bloggers write about things other than politics:

But where have all the political blogs gone? There's this one, but that's also a newspaper column, or this one, not updated frequently, or this one that's not by a Ugandan, and some others that are more general to Africa and not specific to Uganda.

Or were polticial blogs never there in the first place? There's plenty of thoughts on boda bodas, Big Brother Africa, the bad weather Kampala's been having lately, being broke, and other aspects of life in Uganda that certainly aren't apolitical, but they aren't exactly government budgets and school fires either.

My experience in Uganda has been that expat bloggers are the ones writing about politics, while Ugandan bloggers write more about their daily lives. As Glenna pointed out, this isn't always true — in addition to the bloggers she mentioned, Tumwijuke at Ugandan Insomniac often writes about current events. But for the most part, for every political post you find, there will be fifty more about romantic escapades or beautiful Sunday mornings in Kampala. Commenting on Glenna's post, Antipop explains:

To be honest with you most of us come to blogger to escape from it all. The fires, the term limits, the land wrangles, GAVI funds, presidential jet, potholes, fuel prices, press freedom, FDC, NRM,...it is everywhere you turn. the papers, the radio, tv, in the bar, even the woman that sells cassava roots in the market will have something to say about how the soaring prices have everything to do with a MUNYANKOLE president. the last thing you wnat to do is come to blogger and find it. I guess we are just tired. There is only so much whinning we can do.

As an author for Global Voices, a site that aims to "aggregate, curate, and amplify the global conversation online," I admit to getting frustrated when something (like the ICC charges against Sudanese president al-Bashir) happens and Ugandans — who, as Glenna points out, are among the most affected, given that what happens in Sudan could have major repercussions for the case against Joseph Kony and his commanders — say nothing.

At the same time, the mission of GV isn't to aggregate, curate and amplify just the political conversation online. As I understand it, GV is a bridge between the part of the world that's constantly connected to BBC and CNN and the part of the world that's not. If that bridge only includes politics, which often means stories of violence, corruption and election fraud, GV and its readers are missing out on a huge part of life in the countries we claim to represent.

One of the most important things to come of out last month's
Global Voices Summit is that the political voices aren't the only ones that need to be amplified. Cultural and social voices are equally important to an understanding of other places, and several recent posts attempt to present readers with a more nuanced view of countries that are only discussed internationally when a crisis brings them to our attention. I still get frustrated when something of political importance goes unnoticed by the blogren, but I think the bloggers who are using their blogs to write novellas or talk about public transportation play an valuable role in transmitting information about Uganda to the rest of the world.

GVO: African bloggers react to ICC charges against Sudanese President al-Bashir

2008-07-16T13:59:00.004-04:00

My next piece, co-written with John Liebhardt, is up at Global Voices Online:

Bloggers from around the world are reacting to the International Criminal Court's recent decision to charge Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir with multiple counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Many of those bloggers are criticizing the indictments, claiming they are difficult to enforce and that they will bring more unrest to an already unstable nation.

Read more»

Featured in this round-up are Too Huge World, Sudanese Thinker, Sudan Watch, Emmanuel Abalo, Codrin Arsene, Nairobi Notebook, The Angry African, Victor Ngeny, Chris Blattman, Ugandabeat, Gay Uganda, Making Sense of Darfur, Daniel Sturgis and Ali Alarabi.

GVO Uganda: (No longer) lost in translation

2008-07-15T19:45:00.003-04:00

My next post is up at Global Voices Online:

A little over a year ago, Ugandan blogger Country Boyi wondered why Ugandans weren't blogging in local languages. He wrote:
The power of indigenous languages to infiltrate the thinking of the local people cannot be underestimated.

[…]Do bloggers, like other writers, have a major stake in the development of writing and reading materials in the local languages, and what is in it for them considering the Ugandan society pays little attention to the written word?
The majority of Ugandan bloggers have yet to write in languages other than English, perhaps because four distinct language families, each with multiple languages, are represented in the country. Over the last year, however, several of Uganda's blogren have forayed into the world of local-language blogging via Luglish, a blend of English and Luganda. Luganda is the local language most commonly spoken in central Uganda, including the capital city Kampala.

Read more»

Featured in this post are Dennis of Country Boyi, Tumwi of Ugandan Insomniac, Seamless, Fresh Apples, Buttercookie, Paige and Phil of AndersonBowen and Chris Mason of Caked in Red Clay.

Sarajevo and Sudan

2008-07-12T05:48:00.008-04:00

Everyone told me Dubrovnik would be the highlight of my trip to the Balkans last week. The Adriatic is what seas should be, they said. The city walls are beautiful. Croatians are so nice. You'll fall in love.

In some ways, they were right. The Adriatic is what seas should be, and the walls are beautiful, but Dubrovnik wasn't perfect. The city was overrun with cruise ship crowds and tour buses, and everything was pretty in a postcard way, complete with designated photo opportunities. And I didn't fall in love until I got to Sarajevo.

Sarajevo is not pretty, at least not conventionally so. Buildings still bear the scars of the four-year-long siege during the Yugoslav wars, and the pavement is pockmarked with Sarajevo roses, places where mortar shells wiped out concrete and, sometimes, people.

I don't know why this meant more to me than coastlines and carefully preserved ruins, why I felt more at ease in Bosnia than in Croatia. A professor once accused me of being a conflict junkie; I'm not sure if that's true, but there is something about Sarajevo — something about an old man in a café, consuming an endless stream of coffee and cigarettes, telling me stories of four years without electricity or running water, urging me to drink from the fountain with magic waters so that I will always come back. Something about his girlfriend, who sits down at our table and orders a saucer of whipped cream for Snoopy, a tiny dog who keeps her company while her daughter studies in the States. Something about the one-room war museum, its stained glass still shattered from the war. "Beautiful" is perhaps both the least and most appropriate word: the city is sadly, richly captivating.

Yesterday was the 13th anniversary of the genocide at Srebrenica, where over 8000 Bosnian Muslims were killed by Bosnian Serbs in a UN-protected "safe area." Some survivors of the massacre have brought a lawsuit against the United Nations, particularly the Dutch troops in Srebrenica, for failing to stop the killings, a move that is understandable but probably useless.

Ian Williams has a post on the Guardian's Comment is Free comparing Unprofor, the UN protection force in Bosnia, to UNAMID in Sudan. His main point is that both forces are (were) maddeningly weak: under-supported, under-funded and consequently facing impossible tasks. For UNAMID, this weekend's announcement that the International Criminal Court is likely to seek an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on charges of crimes against humanity and genocide in Darfur will probably make things even worse. Williams writes:

After Srebrenica, the phrase "Never Again" was again on everyone's lips. In international Diplo-Speak, maybe that phrase misses punctuation. Maybe it should be written "Never! Again?", meaning something like "Whoops."

GVO Summit: Quick note on tools

2008-07-10T18:42:00.002-04:00

The Global Voices Citizen Media Summit in Budapest two weeks ago was a whirlwind of new ideas and information. Among them: a list of handy Web 2.0 tools for liveblogging/covering conferences.

Throughout the summit I used ScribeFire to blog within Firefox. It is my new favorite blogging tool, hands down: a quick window that opens in the bottom half of your browser window and lets you save drafts, publish directly to multiple blogs, edit old posts, tag and categorize, all without leaving the precious set of relevant sites you've carefully opened and arranged in tabs.

During the summit, I also posted quick updates to my Twitter account. You can follow me and everyone else who tagged their posts with gvsummit08 using Summize or Hashtags. Summize picks up more from Twitter than Hashtags, but Hashtags aggregates photos, video and blog posts as well as tweets.

The summit liveblog used CoverItLive, which allows readers to comment in a chat-room-esque atmosphere. Livebloggers can also post relevant polls, and the liveblog window can be inserted into any web page. I liveblogged the last session on the GV Summit blog and posted it on Jackfruity as well.

Other tools
The presence of so many skilled photographers intimidated me (the few touristy Budapest photos I did take are on Picasa), and I didn't get any shots from the summit itself, but you can check out the wealth of photos from other attendees on Flickr. SlideShare was used as a hub for many of the Powerpoint/Keynote presentations. Summit videos are on YouTube, and recordings of each presentation can be viewed on Ustream.

Update
The lovely and invaluable Leonard has reminded me that video clips of the conference are also available on Blip TV, thanks to GV Advocacy director Sami ben Gharbia.

GVO Summit, Day 4: Google Maps mash-up workshop

2008-06-30T11:05:00.007-04:00

Global Voices Advocacy director Sami ben Gharbia is leading a workshop today on Google Maps mash-ups. The results of our first efforts:

View Larger Map

GVO Summit, Day 2, Session 5

2008-06-28T11:09:00.002-04:00

GVO Summit, Day 2, Session 3

2008-06-28T08:11:00.000-04:00

Session 3: When Biases Meet Biases

The March 10 protests in Lhasa on the 49th anniversary of the Tibetan uprising against Beijing rule immediately won the sympathy and support of Western media outlets, bloggers, and human rights organizations. From the point of view of many Chinese bloggers, however, the international coverage of the protests boiled down to misinformed anti-Chinese sentiment. What can be done to encourage dialogue in times of such heated disagreement? How is the hegemony of truth constructed in the current global media ecology? What is the role of editorialized websites like Global Voices in presenting multiple perspectives on a single issue, while also adding context for an international, multilingual readership?

Moderator: Xiao Qiang

Rebecca MacKinnon, University of Hong Kong and Global Voices

tibetan protests/riots

protests around torch -- many people saw this as opportunity to protest widely -- many ppl around the world thought chinese citizens would support these protests b/c it's action against repressive govt., but chinese citizens were angry and called western media biased

anti-CNN web site created by chinese citizens

CNN cropped a photo from tibet that cut out a mob of tibetans throwing rocks (tibetans being violent back) -- just showed other part of photo

hoping that Internet will help prevent this sort of disconnect, but in this situation it was chinese talking to chinese and west talking to west -- no real understanding/compassion for others' views, it's "silos" -- alternative, isolated perceptions of reality

the concern is that the "West and China are creating parallel and separate spaces"

instruction video on YouTube for how to log in to Chinese version of Twitter and join conversation

have to do more than criticize & accuse

"if only they could get our information, have access to our info, they'd agree w/us" -- this is dangerous idea

lack of conversation is exacerbated by censorship: harder to post info about China from w/in China b/c it's blocked or censored

key: compassion & understanding

Xiao Qiang

Tibetan protests in March 2008 turned into riots, govt. blocked media

Chinese students abroad accused media of bias

govt. then released info about Tibetans attacking Chinese (which was true), blamed it on Dalai Lama (not necessarily true)

Internet played a dividing role, pushing ppl to extremes

John Kennedy, Chinese Language Editor, Global Voices

Tibetan police called "Chinese police" on CNN

antiCNN documented all of this, their site is in english & chinese

Olympics are an opportunity to push an agenda, but what agenda should bloggers be pushing?

questions to ask:

-- how different, really, are the different Chinese views on Tibet?

-- is there just one? multiple?

-- chinese view of "Free Tibet" protester who knows nothing about Tibet?

-- what & who do you disagree with?

-- which China do you disagree with?

-- what's the HK perspective on what happened in Tibet? some might consider their views more valid than those of mainland Chinese

-- are ppl in China overly sensitive?

-- how many ppl are willing to talk about human rights issues w/foreigners who have western view of human rights?

-- are all Chinese bloggers anti-CNN?

Isaac Mao, Entrepreneur and Researcher, China

we always think we're right

barriers come from lack of info, heightened by censorship

Rebecca MacKinnon

similar to Danish cartoon controversy -- how to bridge conversation?

Ethan Zuckerman

speech intended for one audience is becoming public -- challenge is to adapt your speech for a global audience

Questions

audience comment: "Change is not Viagra. We should not expect instant change."
John Kennedy: "Twitter is my Viagra."
Solana Larsen: "Viagra is cheaper on the Internet."

GVO Summit, Day 2, Session 2

2008-06-28T06:54:00.001-04:00

Session 2: The Wired Electorate in Emerging Democracies

The rise of blogging, social networking and micro-blogging services like Facebook and Twitter, video- and photo-sharing sites like YouTube and Flickr, and the spread of mobile technology have given ordinary citizens the means, at least potentially, to participate more fully in the democratic process. This session looks at the impact these tools have had on recent elections in Kenya, Venezuela, Armenia and Iran and poses the question: is citizen media having an actual impact on democracies in transition?

Moderator: Solana Larsen

GV as a hub for global info -- MSM comes to them and asks who they can talk to when crises happen

what makes bloggers feel responsible for citizen journalism? what makes them get up at 3 a.m.?

how was Twitter used? (Luis Carlos: I need Twitter b/c I speak a lot, I need a character limit, forces you to be creative & react immediately)

no one really seems comfortable with term "citizen journalism" -- do bloggers think of selves as journalists? (Onnik: it was journalists blogging, things were polarized and threats were made)

who are Iranians learning from (in terms of using social media)? -- Hamid: 60,000 Iranian bloggers, learn from multiple sources & from each other

Daudi Were, Kenya
Note: for more on blogging the 2007 Kenya elections, check out Ory Okolloh's talk from Day 1, Session 2

Kenyan elections: Kibaki (incumbent) vs. Odinga

around 800 bloggers (note to blogren: why do you think Kenya has so many more bloggers than Uganda? is it pure economics/technology, or are there a social/cultural reasons as well?)

SMS & Facebook used in elections -- esp. SMS, which was used for getting ppl to polls as well as for threatening messages

bloggers were constant presence during elections

Twitter

mainstream media was under attack, which bloggers seemed to care more about than its own members did

challenges: bandwidth

bloggers in diaspora trying to raise $$ to buy machetes to send back to kenya

blog aggregator has been useful tool

citizen media faster than MSM, more frequently updated, can react more quickly and reach further (can be difficult b/c it can be used, intentionally or not, to spread rumors)

"bloggers are not aliens"

"Obama effect" -- copying from America

Onnik Krikorian, Armenia

Armenia is typical former Soviet republic of 3 million ppl

falsified elections since independence; haven't met international standards for democracy

president suspended constitutional term limits; former president returned to challenge -- he's popular among educated young ppl who were already blogging

blogging became political tool for first time in country

media is repressed/govt. owned

opposition protested election via blogs

20-day state of emergency declared on March 1, 2008, all information govt. controlled except for blogs

YouTube blocked, but bloggers moved to other services -- one video showed police shooting at protesters instead of up in the air, as they had claimed

president had his ppl set up a blog/web site

Internet penetration low, avg. salary $200/month and Internet connection $50/month -- but it's getting cheaper, and mobile phone tech. is getting better -- great potential

new president of Armenia just asked his press spokesman to meet w/bloggers to find out what they're all about

Hamid Tehrani, Iran

pro-reformist association of Iranian bloggers: Yarane Barad ("the friends of rain")

express ideas that aren't found in other media, critical of govt.

reform candidates banned from participating in elections

also non-reformist bloggers: reformist and non-reformist "mutually ignore each other" online

Luis Carlos Díaz, Venezuela

too much petroleum: good and bad, allows govt. to be independent b/c they have source of wealth

polarization: pro- or anti-Chavez, rich or poor

ppl. don't talk about politics

somewhere between 3000 and 60,000 Venezuelan blogs, 5.7 million Internet users, 27 million ppl

Elections3D: posts, photos & videos about the presidential elections: 2000 posts in 3 days

(this guy is great -- everyone in the room is laughing)

tagging is important for search engine optimization

Questions

Korea: many ppl supporting politicians through Internet, "elected through Internet," since election more than 1000 NGOs have been founded & a ton of new online activists, ppl. expressing opinions through internet....basically, is there a worry that the govt. may try to suppress citizen media surrounding elections, that ppl may become apathetic/stop trying, that excitement may wear off?

Onnik: in Armenia, penetration still low -- but it's growing and may play a huge role in next election. concern: when blogs were only medium during emergency, large NGOs started focusing on BLOGS w/o necessarily understanding them -- may change blogging landscape

Neha: not every blogger aspires to be a citizen journalist/write about politics, don't need to deride ppl who write for personal pleasure, it's okay to appreciate people for what they're passionate about, everything is important, shouldn't shun part of the blogosphere as being to banal

when sites are blocked: circumvent or use others (proxy sites or using DailyMotion instead of YouTube, for example)

someone commented on Ahmadinejad's blog: "you're stupid, i bet most of these comments are fake/propaganda"

Luis: Chavez doesn't have a blog

bloggers don't have problems w/govt. in Venezuela, not under surveillance -- challenge is bandwidth

David Sasaki: what are limits of media? (i.e. rwandan genocide, media contributed -- radio) -- what if you're streaming video of violence, and all of the sudden you're attracting ppl who want to participate in violence instead of condemn it?

Samir: will things be different/better the next time around, in terms of ethics?

-- Daudi: negative side of blogging in Kenya, post-election violence triggered by SMS in many cases

Alaa: SMS is so easy, you don't need to get online -- can just forward messages, don't need to subscribe

where does sense of responsibility come from? why do bloggers rise to the challenge in these situations?

Onnik: Armenian MSM is of terrible quality, "Armenian journalists would make great bloggers" (if you think blogs are based on opinion, not fact) -- was hoping blogosphere would fill this gap, but it was just as (or more) polarized, prob. contributed to clashes that eventually occurred

Daudi: ppl need to know that blogs aren't perfect, just as opinionated as people are

GVO Summit, Day 2, Session 1

2008-06-28T05:08:00.002-04:00

Today started with an introduction to Rising Voices, the outreach arm of Global Voices. A quick overview:

Session 1: Web 2.0 Goes Worldwide

The participatory web has, so far, been limited to the participation of select communities. Thanks to the steady proliferation of broadband connectivity and digital literacy campaigns throughout the developing world, however, some of the most exciting uses of online tools are now taking place in locations where, merely a decade ago, internet access was rare, if available at all. This panel will gather leaders of cutting-edge Web 2.0 initiatives from Colombia, Kenya, Bolivia, and Madagascar who seek to make the global conversation more representative of the global population.

Moderator: Lova Rakotomalala

Catalina Restrepo, HiperBarrio, Colombia

work through libraries to do new media training

project has united community, helped people make friends and write about their experiences

freedom to say what you want to say -- makes people happier, ability to speak out is directly related to happiness

violence has gone down, area now considered a beautiful, peaceful place

project facilitates integration of neighborhoods in Medellín -- not bordering neighborhoods but very similar, have a lot in common

Collins Dennis Oduor, REPACTED, Kenya

"community theatre" instead of "street theatre" -- "we don't have streets there"

REPACTED uses magnet theatre -- doesn't perform, but trains students to tackle own issues through theatre

open mic rapping -- improv, pick topics from basket

work in schools, prisons, etc.

Rising Voices allowed REPACTED to form group for HIV+ youth in prison, working with IDPs

Cristina Quisbert, Voces Bolivianas, Bolivia

Bloguivianos 2007 -- Bolivian blogger meeting

multiple blog workshops

writing about indigenous ppl in Spanish, now also in English -- enables her to share indigenous culture with English-speaking world

few ppl blogging about indigenous topics, few indigenous ppl blogging at all (even fewer women)

she writes about music, uploads videos

"sad moments": technical difficulties (old equipment, slow internet, etc.); insulting e-mails/comments; some ppl think she is a man

Mialy Andriamananjara, FOKO, Madagascar

founded by 4 bloggers after TED Africa 2007

challenges: few bloggers, expensive internet, electricity issues, blogging gets bad PR -- considered frivolous, something for teenagers/for ppl who want to stand out/want attention

emphasis on community in Madagascar

young, poor, sick not respected

skepticism: ppl didn't understand why you'd blog instead of feeding the poor

networked w/UN youth club, journalism school, peace corps volunteer

slow internet -- hard to upload vid/pics

150 blogs opened in 10 months, blog clubs in 3 major cities, alliance w/Ministry of Education for more digital literacy projects (but lack funding), publish some posts in English-language papers -- these bloggers get stipend

have "converted" some journalists to blogging

female bloggers coordinated reading of Vagina Monologues

one blogger mobilized help for boy born with physical deformity, coordinated medical assistance

learned to encourage bloggers, respect different learning curves

competition not always good, esp. in community-oriented society like Madagascar

comments are important

have "buddy system" -- pair in-country blogger with one in diaspora

future goals: set up new media center, web design workshops, help artisans get online, focus on women

Questions

what do you need? how can ppl help? how do you sustain projects and train so many ppl on such a small budget?

-- REPACTED needs help training ppl in web design, computer literacy; they have camera and are using it to tape weddings/birthdays to make $$

how can other ppl from other parts of the world help amplify the voices of indigenous Bolivians?

-- blogs are a solution, comments and visits help sustain bloggers

how does training work? how do you counter suspicions, address stigma surrounding blogs?

-- rely on networking, friends teaching friends, a lot of support from diaspora

GVO Summit, Day 1, Session 4

2008-06-27T10:18:00.001-04:00

Session 4: “Frontline Activists meet the Academy: Tools and Knowledge”

Roger Dingledine from Tor

Tor is anonymity system, program that you run locally that builds a relay path so that no single relay knows both where you're from and where you're going

initially funded by US Department of Defense, then by Electronic Frontier Foundation, Voice of America, InterNews, Google, a Dutch foundation (NL Net)

Tor helps it so that someone who's watching a user can't dictate where they can go -- evades filtering

projects: making it so it's less obvious when ppl are using Tor, six main IP addresses that are being used -- that makes it too easy for govts to find out who's using them

situation can't be solved with a purely technical approach -- many ppl believe that if content is censored by govt, it is bad

challenge: Tor is run locally on computer, so some ppl can't use

challenge: imposter versions of Tor that may actually make it easier for Internet use to be tracked

goal is to make it as usable as possible, available to the non-technically-minded

Nart Villeneuve of Citizen Lab

censorship circumvention is global

multiple tools -- knowing the specific threats you face will determine which tools you use

exporting of censorship -- US companies develop censorship technology & sell it to govts. in other countries

technologies: circumvention vs. anonymity, hybrid tools, public vs. private, open source vs. proprietary, free vs. pay, web-based vs. client

a lot of circumvention tools get you to a blocked site but don't necessarily shield your identity -- have to know what you need and what you're getting in terms of protection

wikileaks.org

aclu.org -- privacy protection in general, not just online

multiple guides exist to help choose technology that works best for you

Isaac Mao, Digital Nomads project, China

censorship central to Chinese life -- affects thoughts and actions (like what Au Wai Pang said about Singapore and psychology) even when ppl. leave country

three walls: free access, free speech, free thinking

have to work on technology, politics & media, and education/culture/self-censorship

in China, blog hosts "self-censor" bloggers

digital nomads: be independent, smart social hacking, backing by powerful Internet philosophy, collaborative & safe working model, foster freedom with "Sharism"

multiple services: co-location of hosting, CMS software installation, fast response to blocking, marketing with social media

$20 per year -- pretty cheap (non-profit), no text ads on the hosted sites

his web site is isaacmao.com, also had notisaacmao.com to evade censorship

Robert Guerra, Privaterra, Cuba

mission: helping orgs understand threats of using technology (including mobile devices, internet)

technology policy -- how govts. are limiting tech

issues: censorship (not just sites but e-mail), surveillance, hacking, blocking, take-down of sites

"portable spy that you have in your pocket" -- cell phone

Danny O'Brien, Electronic Frontier Foundation

tools used for circumvention often developed in a way that's opaque to the ppl using them, both culturally & geographically

so how to choose the tools you use?

decentralization power of the Internet: many tools are v. centralized (Google, for example) -- can be threatening

stay away from commercial products when it comes to circumvention -- Google's product is data for advertisers, not gchat or spreadsheets, and they collect data about users continuously to sell

open source is like a person stripping naked -- not hiding anything

GVO Summit, Day 1, Session 3: Living with Censorship

2008-06-27T09:30:00.005-04:00

Cross-published on Global Voices.

The first day of the Global Voices Summit focused heavily on censorship and its effects on bloggers. Session three examined what bloggers and other netizens who live in countries with government censorship do to evade and combat it. The session was liveblogged by Jillian York.

Awab Alvi, co-founder of the Don't Block the Blog campaign in Pakistan, moderated the session. Speaking were:

CJ Hinke, founder of Freedom Against Censorship Thailand (FACT)

Helmi Noman, a researcher who studies internet censorship and usage in the Arab world

John Kennedy, a Canadian blogger living in China

Rezwan, a Bangladeshi blogger who heads translation efforts for Global Voices Lingua in Bangla

Andrew Heavens, a journalist who has spent time in Ethiopia and Sudan

Yazan Badran, Global Voices Lingua in Arabic editor, filling in for Razan Ghazzawi of the Free Tariq campaign in Syria, whose flight was delayed

Thailand

CJ Hinke opened the session with a brief overview of Internet censorship in Thailand. The first censorship law was passed in 1997. The law was intended to assist in the fight against the trafficking of women and children, but its terms were strict enough to open the door for more widespread filtering. In 2006, a new cybercrime law was passed that included the death penalty, a sentence later reduced to 20 years in prison.

Fifty thousand web sites are currently blocked in Thailand, CJ said. He questioned whether the number of sites matters and suggested that the principle is more important. Freedom Against Censorship Thailand (FACT) is anti-all censorship, and they have struggled to find supporters because many people believe that sites that distribute child pornography, objectify women or promote hate speech should be blocked.

Middle East and North Africa

Read More

OpenNet Initiative: MENA

Helmi Noman followed CJ's presentation by talking about the power shift that is currently taking place in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). As more and more people have access to the Internet, the power to regulate social, economic and political activity is shifting from authorities to individuals. Governments are responding by cracking down on Internet use.

Censorship in the MENA region takes several forms, Helmi said. Some sites are blocked or filtered. Download speeds in some countries are controlled, effectively blocking access to movies and music. Finally, Internet cafés are often subject to strict regulations about screen placement and partitioning, ensuring that users' screens are visible to employees at all times.

Helmi Noman discusses Internet censorship in the Middle East and North Africa during the 2008 Global Voices Summit. Photo via madmonk.

Helmi noted that another obstacle to unfettered Internet use in the MENA area is social. Multiple studies and news articles have been released that focus on the negative effects, particularly the negative sexual consequences, of Internet on society. For example, one article claimed that many modern divorces are due to the amount of time men spend online looking at pornography.

There is some good news coming out of the region: multiple web sites now give tutorials on circumvention so users can access them after they are blocked. Yahoo! and other online groups are being used to exchange censored content, and a recent survey revealed that most Internet users in the region have used circumvention tools, especially proxy URLs, to access blocked sites.

Helmi ended his presentation by claiming that while filtering and censorship are problems in the MENA region, an even bigger issue is the digital divide. The gap between the actual and potential use of technology in the region is still large. Many people still lack Internet access, and those who do are clustered in urban areas.

China

John Kennedy used his presentation to inject hope and encouragement into the middle of an otherwise sober panel, focusing on several positive things happening online in China.

Among his examples was a mashup of air pollution in China [Zh], which is based on public records of pollution incidents and allows viewers to give feedback. Global Voices covered blogger reactions to the site last December.

Another creative success story was that of Zhang Shihe [Zh], a Chinese blogger who spent August 2007 bicycling through rural north central China to bring seldom-published stories from the area to the blogosphere via photo, video and written posts. Zhang began blogging out of frustration at the failure of Beijing police to properly document a murder crime scene, and continues to write about crime, the 2008 Olympics, and a variety of other topics.

Chinese blogger Zhang Shihe on his month-long bicycle blogging tour through north central China. Photo via 24 Hours Online.

One of the most radical instances of blog activism in China took place after the house arrest and later imprisonment of environmental and political activist Hu Jia. While Hu was in jail, his wife Zeng Jinyan, who was documenting Hu's detainment on her blog, was put under house arrest with the couple's newborn child in the Freedom City housing complex in Beijing.

Hu and Zeng recorded the conditions of their surveillance in a documentary called "Prisoners in Freedom City," which was published on YouTube:

The conditions of the house arrest were so severe as to endanger the health of Zeng and the child, and Chinese bloggers and activists rallied to deliver baby formula and other supplies. After several failed attempts, one blogger succeeded, using the couple's documentary, Google Maps and blueprints of the building to hack past the surveillance system and deliver milk powder to Zeng. The entire process, including directions, security police license plate numbers, photos of the complex and a detailed description of the 24-hour mission, was compiled in a manual that quickly spread through the Chinese blogosphere.

Bangladesh

In Bangladesh, Internet censorship is tied to the state of emergency instituted in January 2007, following riots and violence surrounding scheduled parliamentary elections. All criticism of the government is banned, and the press self-censors heavily, Rezwan reported. News of extrajudicial killings and detentions is rarely if ever published by the mainstream media, and several journalists have been arrested.

Bangla bloggers are fighting back, however, and a large citizen journalism community is publishing investigative reports online. Bloggers are so active, Rezwan said, that they were able to spread the news of the arrest of Tasneem Khalil, a former journalist and blogger, so efficiently that the government was forced to release him after one day. Rezwan pointed out that Global Voices broke the story to the international press and contributed to Khalil's release.

Ethiopia

Andrew Heavens spoke of his experiences in Ethiopia, where the only internet service provider is state-run, text messaging has been blocked since May 2005 and a blanket block on the entire Blogspot domain is in effect. "Censorship is not just the basic fact of having your voice silenced," Andrew said, calling it a personal attack that is meant to limit and demoralize the person being censored, leading eventually to self-censorship.

Andrew sketched an outline of internet censorship in Ethiopia, which from 2004 to 2005 had a vibrant blogosphere. Protested elections in June 2005 led to mass arrests and police massacres, and the blogosphere exploded in anger. By May 2006, all Blogspot blogs were blocked. Initially, the block motivated bloggers. Many displayed "Blocked in Ethiopia" badges on their sites, and information on proxy servers and other methods of circumvention were shared between bloggers.

Within a few months, however, several formerly active bloggers had stopped writing, others had slowed, and the flow of new blogs had dried up. Andrew blamed this on the block and lamented the self-censorship the Ethiopian government's actions have created. Even more aggravating, he said, is the fact that the government refuses to acknowledge the blocking, calling it a technical glitch.

Syria

The focus of Yazan Badran's presentation was Tariq Biaisi [Ar], a Syrian blogger who was arrested for criticizing the Syrian security apparatus in an online forum, and detained for three years after being convicted of "weakening the national ethos." The government reacted so strongly to the case that Razan Ghawazzi, originally schedule to give this presentation, closed her blog and moved to Lebanon. Bloggers and activists campaigned for Biaisi's freedom via the Free Tariq movement, but the campaign was unsuccessful.

Yazan credited the campaign's failure to its inability to engage average Syrian citizens. The concepts of activism, volunteerism and freedom of speech the campaign was based on were not well-defined and have little meaning in Syrian society, he said. The bloggers working on the campaign were mostly living abroad, which lent an elitist feel to the movement.

Social and economic concerns also contributed to the general apathy surrounding Biaisi's case, Yazan said. As an Islamist, Biaisi was not supported by a portion of the population. Many people wondered why they should support free speech when they were struggling to feed their families. Yazan concluded by conveying a comment from Razan, who believes that economic reform is the best way to strengthen support for free speech in Syria.

GVO Summit, Day 1, Session 2

2008-06-27T06:50:00.001-04:00

Session 2 is on citizen media and online free speech.

Wael Abbas (MisrDigital, Egypt)

Egypt is a "democratic charade" -- media subject to censorship, not allowed to start TV/radio station b/c state owns airwaves, closing newspapers, confiscating video/audio

"dire need for alternative source of media in Egypt that delivers information to the public, uncensored"

street protests not getting enough coverage (anti-govt), so bloggers started capturing it & delivering it to public -- erasing line between blogger and journalist

blogging in Egypt helped jumpstart/lead print media -- tackled taboo issues, exposed corruption -- papers use info from bloggers

Christian blogger/bloggers organizing sit-ins/demos have been shut down

character assassination by govt on bloggers -- accused of converting to Christianity, being gay

lots of YouTube use

Ory Okolloh, Kenya

covered post-election crisis in Kenya

media ban: blogging became more critical

the good: her blog wasn't shut down, no official censorship (perhaps b/c govt. didn't know or wasn't sophisticated enough to shut down), Kenyans generally able to blog freely

activists needed mobile phone credit during election crisis -- had doubled in price, was being used as currency -- shows importance of SMS/phones

journalists were contacting bloggers and having them publish information (both b/c of ban and because they were worried about govt. reaction)

tried to distinguish between fact & gossip -- lots of reports coming in during crisis

opened blog to comments -- gave access to ppl who weren't experienced bloggers

the bad: a lot of self-censorship in blogging community, partisanship, trying to be neutral -- affected tone of debate/credibility, voicing opinion can offend some people who might stop following information, internet access harder to get b/c mobility restricted by violence, phone credit expensive so Twittering hard -- have to choose between Twitter and talking to family

had to moderate comments for the first time -- comments intense and prolific, some threatening (and sexually violent: threats of rape, etc.) -- did fear for safety

Internet became a tool for Kenyans in diaspora

good work that some bloggers were doing was overshadowed by hate speech from others

Ushahidi -- developed to track post-election violence

Au Wai Pang (Alex), Singapore

involved in gay rights movement in Singapore

Internet mostly uncensored in Singapore, but ppl act like it's not -- "psychology trumps technology" -- how to overcome this?

media, trade unions both govt. controlled, detention w/o trial (up to 29 years), opposition members sued for libel

many people live comfortably -- don't think censorship is a big deal; focus is on career instead of politics/social issues

peer pressure: family, company pressure you not to speak out

govt. suspicious of Internet but doesn't censor b/c Singapore is business/financial center

how to alter psychology? ppl. need to participate offline, anonymity won't change society

Oiwan Lam, Hong Kong

political/historical context of censorship of "indecent" content in HK -- HK one of most "sexually repressive" places in the world

colonial regime: public order ordinance, restricted freedoms of speech and assembly, ordinances controlling "indecencies" usually prompted by local govt.

"sexy photo gate" -- netizen detained for 2 weeks w/o bail for publishing photos deemed "indecent"

statue of David classified as indecent

Amine, Morocco

YouTube video of police taking bribes from drivers (maker of video calls self "Targuist Sniper") -- in response, Morocco created anti-corruption commission, arrested several policemen

but then, tried to find Targuist Sniper -- arrested multiple people known to be internet-savvy, but while they were in jail, more videos were posted (oops)

is govt. reaction part of deep authoritarianism or more a misunderstanding of technology?

videos viewed by more than 1.5 million ppl on YouTube, almost 3.5 million if you count repostings of videos

other ppl started emulating tactic (in TanTan, Nador, Casablanca)

Morocco not "notoriously repressive," but it does have a strange relationship to Internet -- doesn't block blogs, but it is wary of web 2.0 tools (YouTube blocked for several days in 2007, Google Maps blocked for past 2 years)

Fouad Mourtada put in prison for posting a fake Facebook profile of the king's brother -- one of the questions he got during interrogation was, "why did you invent Facebook.com?" -- shows clear lack of understanding of Internet

Moroccan govt. denied protests, broadcast interviews that claimed everything was pleasant -- YouTube videos of violence contradicted official line

hard to know how govt. perceives Internet, but recently published magazine article says web 2.0 is "source of interference" between govt. and public, blogs have undeclared intentions and are published w/o rules or professionalism

Hamid, Iran

Iranian censorship, both on- and offline, has increased in last few years: he joked that it creates jobs

Iranian govt. announced that 10 million sites have been blocked, 90% for immoral content (including photos of Nicole Kidman)

blogs by women heavily filtered

Note: You can also watch a live feed of the summit, follow those who are twittering from it, look at the slides, and check out the photos and live blog.

GVO Summit, Day 1, Session 1

2008-06-27T05:19:00.001-04:00

I'm in Budapest this weekend for the 2008 Global Voices Citizen Media Summit. You can watch a live feed of the summit, follow those who are twittering from it, look at the slides, and check out the photos and live blog.

Some quick notes from the first session on working toward a global anti-censorship network (typing quickly, will come back and edit later):

Andrei Abozau, Belarus

situation in Belarus: "Big Brother is watching you"

(note: more about censorship/filtering in Belarus available through the OpenNet Initiative)

censorship hurting legal business activities

the more that is known about censorship, the less the govt. will be able to oppress

Alaa Abdel Fatah, Egypt

Egypt using courts to block free speech (as opposed to technical Internet censorship)

Facebook activist tortured, both to get him to stop & to get him to give up his password

creating atmosphere of fear to induce self-censorship

vid of protest, not shown on TV (including BBC) -- ppl trying to tear down poster of president mubarak: "it was filmed by phone camera. i love nokia."

if you want to help free speech in Egypt, you can't be isolated from bigger struggle (of govt. repression/torture)

blogs document torture w/photos, personal accounts

blogger documenting factory polluting lake w/industrial waste -- company took him to court for libel (libel laws designed by govt. to protect govt. -- can spend 3 yrs in prison for libel)

there is due process, perfectly legal, doesn't look like censorship/oppression -- still bad b/c consequence is bad, not b/c process is bad

process can be painful, can be arrested during trial -- enough pressure to create self-censorship

international trend for internet censorship through courts -- most free speech advocates don't know how to handle, assume that courts & rule of law are both good

* do bloggers need legal help from outside their countries?
* are bloggers above the law? do they make mistakes, or should we always support them when they're taken to court?

Chris Salzberg, Japan

Japan different from other examples b/c Internet is mostly open

what does censorship mean in Japan? filtering content seen as harmful to society (not just child porn, but other things)

copyright legislation -- want to make it illegal to download, not just upload

mobile phone access -- already being filtered in japan for ppl. under 18

bill just passed (June 11th): PC makers must pre-install national filtering software on PCs & phones

GLBT & political & religion -based content filtered for ppl under 18

filtering seen as social issue (not political) -- parents worried about kids, mobile phone access

support for regulation in japan quite high (76% support filtering "harmful content")

opposition strategies: regulation will stop innovation, creativity -- japan will be left behind/outcompeted, proposals are technologically contradictory

oppression not seen as govt. thing -- people (death threats, net bullying, obscenity, copyright violation)

Awab Alvi, Pakistan (Don't Block the Blog)

strategies for getting around massive blogspot block in Pakistan: proxy servers (pkblogs.com), javascript & greasemonkey

lots of aggregation: bloggers.pk, vid.pk

Musharraf attacked judicial system -- overthrew 60 judges, blocked TV, arrested journalists -- citizen/online media replacing papers/TV

SMS/text messaging has great potential -- cheaper and more widely available than computers/online blogging, need to focus on building mobile community

Northern Uganda: a starting point

2008-06-21T06:08:00.005-04:00

In my efforts to pay more regular attention to the ongoing conflict in northern Uganda, I've been spending a lot of time on these web sites:

The Uganda Conflict Action Network has been posting near-daily updates about the conflict since June 2005.

A month-by-month description of the peace talk process and of the status of peace and reconciliation (these overlap a lot; anyone know why they aren't merged?) can be found at USAID's Virtual Presence Post: Northern Uganda.

The Beyond Juba Project looks beyond the peace talks and the conflict in northern Uganda to address larger issues of sustainable national reconciliation. It is a joint initiative of the Refugee Law Project, the Human Rights and Peace Center and the Makerere University Faculty of Law.

A photo essay about the six days photographer Erin Baines spent with the LRA in Nabanga, Sudan in August 2006: "How does one prepare to meet the world's most wanted man? Should I have at least brushed my hair that day? He told me it was nice to meet me. I think I smiled stupidly the whole time. It hardly seemed appropriate."

I also wrote earlier about my northern Uganda reading list. If a book and a cup of coffee are more your style, this is a good place to start.

Landscape and character in northern Uganda

2008-06-20T05:14:00.004-04:00

One of my strongest memories from Uganda is riding the bus between Kampala and Gulu, watching the land — green, thick, damp and hilly in Kampala, at times stifling and claustrophobic — flatten out to meet the bright, open sky. It always felt good, no matter what meetings I had ahead of me or what I had left behind in Kampala.

from Flickr via Snaptography
In an essay titled "Landscape and Character," Lawrence Durrell, a novelist and travel writer whose works I devoured in Uganda, claimed that "human beings are expressions of their landscape." Land is a central part of the northern Ugandan conflict; the Acholi, for the most part, are subsistence farmers, and being separated from their land and herded into Internally Displaced Persons camps has ruined their economy and their social structure. Not a difficult thing, to be tied to your land, when your land is as beautiful as northern Uganda. On the bus I always wondered what Uganda would have been like if Kampala had looked like Gulu, or vice versa.

Earlier this month, DeTamble and Gay Uganda both linked to BBC's special feature on the war, an interactive map of the destruction the conflict has wrought in a single village near Lira, Uganda.

BBC's mash-up of a map, complete with individual huts and trees, and individual accounts from community members of the war's toll on their households brought the conflict back in a way that I hadn't experienced since I was last in Gulu. When I started this blog, I wrote extensively about the conflict, about Joseph Kony, about the International Criminal Court and traditional reconciliation rituals. When I left Uganda, I kept writing, but for some reason — the land in Kansas? — I stopped writing about northern Uganda. My last substantive post on the conflict was almost a year ago. I'm going to try to remedy that this week.

On another note, tonight I've been listening to Exile, an album by northern Ugandan musician Geoffrey Oryema. Oryema's father was a cabinet minister who was murdered by Ugandan security forces during Idi Amin's reign. Exile, at least according to Wikipedia, chronicles the singer's subsequent flight from Uganda in 1977. As I've listened and read through the BBC feature I've been wondering what landscapes Oryema remembers from Uganda.

Museveni in Kansas

2008-06-14T14:35:00.003-04:00

Museveni was at Fort Leavenworth, about 30 miles away from where I live in Kansas, yesterday to celebrate his son's graduation from the Command and General Staff College.

It's a small world.

If either the Monitor or the New Vision covered the story, it hasn't made it online, though an earlier article calls Major Muhoozi Kainerugaba a possible "head of state in the near future."