Latest posts by sami ben gharbia from January, 2008
Blog for a Cause!: The Global Voices Guide of Blog Advocacy
Blog for a Cause!: The Global Voices Guide of Blog Advocacy explains how activists can use blogs as part of campaigns against injustice around the world. Blogging can help activists in several ways. It is a quick and inexpensive way to create a presence on the Internet, to disseminate information about a cause, and to organize actions to lobby decision-makers.
Yemen blocks independent news websites
Numerous Yemeni websites have been blocked recently by government-controlled ISPs. Among them is the popular YemenPortal, Yemen’s first multi-source news crawler and search engine, which extracts headlines from news sites that are being blocked by the authorities. YemenPortal is inviting Yemeni internet users to access the website through a mirror they build at yemen.arabiaportal.net.
Turkey again blocks access to YouTube
Again, a Turkish court has blocked access to the popular video-sharing site YouTube over a video clip allegedly insulting the country's founding father, Kemal Atatürk.
FreeAccess Plus!: Web 2.0 Censorship workaround
Based on Hamed Saber‘s “Access Flickr” Firefox extension, which enables users to circumvent the filter currently in effect in Iran and in few other countries that block Flickr, the popular photo-sharing website, another Iranian developer, MohammadR, has released “FreeAccess Plus!“, a nifty extension that turns Firefox into a proxy that...
Syria: campaign to release Syrian blogger Tarek Baiasi
Bloggers in Syria are running an online campaign to raise awareness about the case of the 23 years old Syrian blogger, Tarek Baiasi, who has been arrested since July 7th, 2007 for critical comments he posted on a deemed “sensitive” website.
Thailand: publishing house website shut down
The website of Fah Diew Kan (Same Sky), a quarterly social and political magazine, has been shut down by its host Net Service Ltd for Lèse majesté violations. The move came after pressure from Thailand’s Ministry of Information and Communication Technology (ICT).
Egypt: lawsuit demanding the websites banning is rejected
Judge Abdel Fattah Mourad, who requested the ban of 51 blogs and websites deemed insulting the state’s dignity and threatening Egypt’s interests, has lost his case. On December 29, 2007, the Administrative Judicial Court rejected the lawsuit and ruled in favor of freedom of speech on the Internet.
Saudi blogger Alfarhan detained for violating rules not related to state security
Responding to repeated requests for comment with a brief cellphone text message, a spokesperson for the Saudi Interior Ministry, confirmed yesterday that blogger Fouad Alfarhan was being held for “interrogation for violating non-security regulations.”