well after all that drama, tasneem was released around 24 hours of his arrest…thank goodness! questions still remain unanswered and clearly it was a close shave..will the next journalist/critic of power be so lucky? the whole issue of media censorship can”t be ignored and the big thing of course is about military taking over power. there is good coverage on this …please check out Mash and Rezwan.. and I will update with links to other bloggers covering this very important topic.
via Pickled Politics ( thanks Sunny!)
“Prominent journalist and fellow blogger Tasneem Khalil has been arrested by the military police in Bangladesh, a serious attack on press freedom in the country.
An editor and outspoken journalist for the English daily newspaper Daily Star, he also worked for CNN and Human Rights Watch in the country. Of late he has been documenting the military’s attempts to take over Bangladesh and restrict political rights and free speech in the country.
Mash says:
Apparently Mr. Khalil’s crime is that he did his job. He spoke truthfully about the current situation in Bangladesh. He was interviewed by Nora Boustany of the Washington Post last month - that interview may have cost him his freedom and now possibly his life.
I have been speaking out over the last month about the military takedown of the democratic system in Bangladesh. One by one the fundamental rights of Bangladeshis have been taken away. But, Bangladeshis have recently started to fight back against the military. The press, the people and the courts have begun speaking out. The military now aims to silence them. Their thuggery is now plain to see.
Other bloggers covering: Drishtipat, Global Voices, Rezwanul, Golmal Sid, Salam Dhaka, Keep me honest, My dear Bangladesh, Adda, Deshi Voice and Butterflies and Wheels.
Human Rights Watch has also issued a press release. SD says this has also been elevated to the US State dept and Washington Post should be doing a story.
We need to organise joint protests in Washington and London in front of the Bangladeshi embassies to raise the profile of this arrest and highlight human rights abuses there. “
Please check out the discussion on Pickled Politics ..where we”re figuring out what we can do. Any ideas are welcome and much appreciated.
The CNN story is here - I can”t find anything on the BBC”s site ..or Amnesty International - see that”s the problem with all these big institutions - they can”t move quickly! Hopefully the blogosphere will be quicker in spreading the news.
I’ve been following the collaborative blog Pickled Politics for a while and I now am contributing through my own diary page on the site - the oh-so-creatively named ..Sonia’s Diary.
Incidentally, Pickled Politics has been nominated for the New Statesman’s New Media Awards 2006 - under the ‘Contributing to Civic Society’ theme.
I would also like to point to another journal I have recently launched - which will be slanted towards literature, art and travel, in addition to any theorizing I may come up with of course.
The ‘first broadband environment channel’ - green.tv has been online since the start of the month, and busy racking up the hits and enjoying lots of media attention. Backed by the UNEP, designed by large blue in collaboration with the espians, {featuring the first application of the ‘Protoplex’}, green.tv broadcasts environmental videos drawn from a wide range of sources - including the Environment Agency, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, etc. One of the ideas -I believe- is to showcase independent films and the work of environmental activists/grassroots work/what’s actually happening on the ground, alongside raising awareness of the ‘big issues’.
If you’re a filmmaker or an organization producing environmental videos and would be interested in contributing your content, please visit their blog for more information. They are also currently in the process of developing the community angle further - if you have any ideas, again please get in touch.
{There is also a pledgebank connected with this - open till 15th May}
With regards to building up the community side of the site, and generally ‘stickiness’ a couple of thoughts come to mind. A wiki would be a great way to encourage collaborative effort - find out what everyone’s thinking - about the content that’s up there, and related to that - how they might want to get involved in the various different projects that are out there in the world today.
On a local level it would be great, if for example one saw a film made by some Southwark kids talking about their environment and their issues etc., and one could then check out the community zone and find out what initiatives are happening in Southwark right now, what the state of recycling is ( and boy does it make a difference depending on what local authority area you’re in! More on that to follow later – yes the state of recycling in London is shocking) or any other relevant happenings- now that would be brilliant. Of course, this is from the perspective of someone who works for an environmental charity – perhaps others will have different views depending on who they are and what they do.
As often is the case, Institutions ( especially big ones - or the ones with clout) can be somewhat overpowering - they like publicity, the hype, the advertising potential –> and there’s always the chance that this can squeeze out what individuals have to say: hence collaboration is key. Generally this is the situation with television and the broadcast industry nowadays .. familiar to anyone who’s taken a passing interest in political economy issues of media. So whilst it is technically interesting to have seamless video streaming on the net –- still, the usual issues of ‘broadcast’ vs. ‘interactive’ remain. push vs. pull and all that old business.{ and boy! talked about for so long:that great-buzzword-since-the-late-90-‘s “video-on-demandâ€Â, and nowadays - Over IP Video - OIPV and IPTV etc.}
No need to get into that particular bit of discourse right here and now, suffice to say that I feel that given the success of this green.tv project will depend on how interactive it actually turns out to be. It’s a fabulous concept, and a great opportunity. Particularly for the folks out there – environmental activists and ordinary people making changes in their lives - instead of just ‘talking the talk’ - this is a great opportunity to be ‘heard and seen’ and if we can all ‘push’ it in the right direction – then it will be fabulous indeed.
what green.tv has to say for itself:
“With green.tv we’ve brought together the audience pulling power of television with the chatroom and blogging interaction of the internet to create a truly powerful new medium, one that reaches out to a global broadband audience - an audience which, importantly, consumes most of the Earth’s valuable resourcesâ€Â
aha, well the guardian has finally clearly lost its patience with the ‘wayward’ contributors to its very popular News Blog and have finally introduced comment registration. previously, any old so- and-so could have come along and written any old thing ( and did). And it was wonderfully amusing, precisely because it digressed so much. as the editors now put it -
“The introduction of comment registration is intended to keep the standard of debate as high as possible..”
“Blog commenters are reminded that comments here are intended to relate directly to the post, rather than to veer off into unrelated subjects. ..Our blog system is ill-suited to that kind of discussion.”
“..Occasionally, when discussions have become irrelevant to the post in question, we will close comments on that post, and we may delete comments already posted if they are unrelated to the topic, to reduce the size of the page for other users.”
well i guess that explains why recently comments have been closed on posts despite clear interest from participants in continuing the slanging matches.
ah, goodbye to the enjoyable vitriol. well it shall be fun to see how the discussion threads ‘behave’ from now on. of course i always think its a bit pointless for ‘moderators’ or ‘editors’ to imagine there’s such a thing as ’sticking to the point’ in a discussion. Doesn’t happen - of course if you don’t want that kind of free-for-all expression on your site, fair enough! I find it amusing of course, that’s what’s so interesting about the Internet. from the point of view of social observation, its invaluable.
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