Stories from 19 June 2009
Vietnam arrests prominent lawyer and writer
Vietnam ’s Ministry of Public Security police arrested Le Cong Dinh in Ho Chi Minh City for participating in subversive activities. Dinh is a prominent pro-democracy lawyer, human rights advocate and writer. Several media groups and local scholars have condemned Dinh’s arrest.
China: Speaking for the Party Or the people?
ESWN translated various articles about a recent catchphrase in the Internet: “Will you speak for the Party? Or will you speak for the people?” The sentence was uttered by a Zhengzhou city government official of the urban planning department Lu Jun to a reporter who was doing an investigative report...
China: Internet with Chinese characteristics
Alice Poon from Asia Sentinel has translated Leung Man To’s introductory remarks at ifeng.com on Hu Yong's newly published book “The Cacophony of Public Voices” (眾聲喧嘩).
Iran: FaceBook in Persian
Cyrus Farviar reports Facebook is about to launch its Persian-language version of the social networking software.
Iran: Google translates Persian
Several bloggers welcome this news that Iranians can now translate, in Google Translate, any text from Persian into English and from English into Persian — whether it's a news story, a website, a blog, an email, a tweet or a Facebook message.
CCTV's propaganda campaign against Google.cn
On June 18th, China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Centre (CIIRC) published a report in its frontage condemning Google.cn for spreading obscene contents. The report, titled as “Strongly condem google for spreading indecent and obscene information”, said
The Irony of Iran's ‘Twitter Revolution’
When the dust settles down on the Iran election crisis, we will see that Twitter was more useful as a media tool and not as an organizing tool.