Looks like there’s a few changes to the World Bank projected under a Wolfowitz regime – The New World Bank offers some insights on what we can look forward to in the New World Order: a World Bank Premier Rewards card, the Moolah for Mullahs programme, and triple frequent flier miles for Coalition of the Willing members. Thanks to Ory and Kaniaru for pointing me to it…

Georg Mascolo, writing for Der Spiegel, has less of a sense of humor about the Wolfowitz nomination…

Looks like there's a few changes to the World Bank projected under a Wolfowitz regime – The New World Bank offers some insights on what we can look forward to in the New World Order: a World Bank Premier Rewards card, the Moolah for Mullahs programme, and triple frequent flier miles for Coalition of the Willing members. Thanks to Ory and Kaniaru for pointing me to it…

Georg Mascolo, writing for Der Spiegel, has less of a sense of humor about the Wolfowitz nomination…

John Palfrey, international man of mystery and director of the Berkman Center (i.e., my boss), has a good post on the Open Net Initiative’s latest academic report on internet filtering in the United Arab Emirates. Using a technique pioneered at Berkman, ONI tried to access a list of 8700 potentially controversial URLs from within UAE and discovered that 15% were blocked, a much higher ratio of blocking than even in well-known censorious states like China or Saudi Arabia. UAE blocks every site emerging from Israel’s top level domain, as well as a wide swath of gambling, pornography, drug and religious sites. John points out that this net blocking is ironic, given UAE’s attempts to position itself as a modern business capital and a center for global commerce.

Berkman and ONI’s research has focused on government filtering efforts, where governments, like that of UAE, force state-owned or controlled ISPs to block access to sites in other nations. I’m becoming increasingly interested in filtering that operates in the other direction: websites in the US or Europe blocking access to users from certain countries due to security concerns. I had coffee with a friend who’s currently working in Macedonia – he pointed out that a number of corporate websites in the US – including web hosting companies, ecommerce sites and domain name registrars – have blocked Macedonian IP addresses. Blacklists are circulating that allow hosts to block “potentially dangerous” IPs and, allegedly, reduce instances of online fraud. My friend reports that Macedonia is no longer in Versign’s top quartile of Internet fraudsters, primarily because so many sites are blocking Macedonian IPs. (The US, on the other hand, is, as are Romania and Vietnam).

CDeliso, writing for Balkanalysis, has an angry reaction to such net blocking, arguing that other “Wild East” nations – notably Russia and Israel – were far more fraud-prone than Macedonia, and that the nation was being unfairly singled out.

It’s likely that web services companies feel more comfortable blocking a small nation like Macedonia, which has very few web users, than an economic powerhouse like Israel or a vast nation like Russia. (Here’s a charmingly racist example of a small business willing to write off countries like Macedonia.)

John Palfrey and others have been arguing for the need for an “accountable internet”, configured to prevent certain types of behavior (sending large volumes of email, for instance), unless a user is “trusted” through one sort or another of verification process. While such plans seem to contradict some of the wisdom underlying the creation of the Internet (dumb networks, the end-to-end principle, edge-based strategies), John and others have argued that some form of Internet accountability is neccesary to prevent governments from putting ill-considered and destructive constraints on how the Internet works.

The free market moves faster that national governments, and private companies are already working to balkanize the Internet by declaring parts of it “unsafe zones”. (Yes, the Macedonia/”balkanize” pun was intended. No, this is not an apology.) This form of blocking is harder to fight than government action – it’s hard to know what leverage either the Macedonians, or open net advocates, have over companies that have decided that it’s fiscally worthwhile to close their doors to certain nations.

I’ve noticed that I can’t use most of my credit cards in Africa, especially West Africa, without getting panicked phonecalls from my card issuers. (Props to American Express, which has evidently figured out that I work in West Africa and that charging a hotel room in Accra doesn’t mean that someone’s committing fraud with my card.) At least I’m able to buy things with cash in Accra after Visa has decided that it’s too risky for me to use my credit card. Users of some domain name registrars, for instance, in “risky nations” don’t have the same recourse and policies like this cause some areas of the Internet to be wholly disconnected from each other. This is a dangerous trend, and I hope some of my Berkman colleagues will consider taking a look at this type of Internet filtering.

A week back, at the Madrid Democracy summit, I had a dinner conversation with friends that centered on the complications of professional journalists maintaining blogs. (The conversation began with a discussion of the Boston Globe’s censure of Hiawatha Bray for political comments he made on his blog.) I argued that I wished that more journalists blogged, so I could triangulate between their “official” stories and their personal observations.

A friend participating in the conversation – who has forgotten more about journalism than I will ever know – argued that, while I was welcome to engage in such triangulation, it was unwise for me to wish it onto readers as a whole. He pointed out – correctly – that I’m a media junkie and argued that most readers aren’t willing to triangulate between a journalist’s personal statements and her reporting. Furthermore, he argued, if a journalist is behaving professionally, there’s no need to know her biases because the reader should have no reason to question whether the reporter’s perspective is coloring the story. Rather than push for more disclosure by journalists and more triangulation by “active readers”, why not just push for more responsible journalism?

I don’t really disagree with my friend’s arguments – it’s just that I’m greedy. I want professional, unbiased reporting and I want to know as much about the reporter as he or she is willing to share. I don’t want to triangulate all the time, and I’m most pleased when my triangulation reveals that a story is told fairly and well. But I really want to be able to check.

In our dinner conversation, one issue that came up was media consolidation – when every major city had multiple newspapers, most of them with a definable political bias, it was fairly easy to triangulate between various biased stories and get to a version of underlying events. To a certain extent, judicious use of Google News allows one to accomplish something similar – I found myself reading Google News closely yesterday, to see who was surprised or worried by the prospect of Wolfowitz becoming the head of the World Bank and who was not.

Unfortunately, most of the stories I’m interested in are reported by a single news source – usually the BBC, IRIN, AFP or the Christian Science Monitor. Triangulating between news sources is often hard to accomplish. Which makes me increasingly grateful for reporters who are blogging as well as reporting. In our dinner conversation, I pointed to Abraham McLaughlin of the Christian Science Monitor, who oftens blogs and reports the same trips he takes in Africa.

McLaughlin’s story and post earlier this week give a good picture of what I hope for out of the synergy of blogging and journalism. Yesterday, McLaughlin posted a story about a candidate for the Zimbabwean parliament and his struggles to campaign in such a repressive nation. The story is surprisingly hopeful – the candidate, a white farmer displaced from his land – was able to hold a rally without being arrested or having his supporters threatened. (While this hardly seems like a great victory, you’ve got to cheer any movements towards openness in Zimbabwe.)

Lest one think that McLaughlin fully buys the statement by a ZANU-PF (ruling party) member that “This election will be freer and fairer than almost any in Zimbabwe’s history – and many in Africa and the world,” McLaughlin’s blog provides a different perspective. Written a day earlier, he gives a “Harper’s Index” of the misery Zimbabweans are facing and the challenges a reporter faces reporting in the country:

John Palfrey, international man of mystery and director of the Berkman Center (i.e., my boss), has a good post on the Open Net Initiative's latest academic report on internet filtering in the United Arab Emirates. Using a technique pioneered at Berkman, ONI tried to access a list of 8700 potentially controversial URLs from within UAE and discovered that 15% were blocked, a much higher ratio of blocking than even in well-known censorious states like China or Saudi Arabia. UAE blocks every site emerging from Israel's top level domain, as well as a wide swath of gambling, pornography, drug and religious sites. John points out that this net blocking is ironic, given UAE's attempts to position itself as a modern business capital and a center for global commerce.

Berkman and ONI's research has focused on government filtering efforts, where governments, like that of UAE, force state-owned or controlled ISPs to block access to sites in other nations. I'm becoming increasingly interested in filtering that operates in the other direction: websites in the US or Europe blocking access to users from certain countries due to security concerns. I had coffee with a friend who's currently working in Macedonia – he pointed out that a number of corporate websites in the US – including web hosting companies, ecommerce sites and domain name registrars – have blocked Macedonian IP addresses. Blacklists are circulating that allow hosts to block “potentially dangerous” IPs and, allegedly, reduce instances of online fraud. My friend reports that Macedonia is no longer in Versign's top quartile of Internet fraudsters, primarily because so many sites are blocking Macedonian IPs. (The US, on the other hand, is, as are Romania and Vietnam).

CDeliso, writing for Balkanalysis, has an angry reaction to such net blocking, arguing that other “Wild East” nations – notably Russia and Israel – were far more fraud-prone than Macedonia, and that the nation was being unfairly singled out.

It's likely that web services companies feel more comfortable blocking a small nation like Macedonia, which has very few web users, than an economic powerhouse like Israel or a vast nation like Russia. (Here's a charmingly racist example of a small business willing to write off countries like Macedonia.)

John Palfrey and others have been arguing for the need for an “accountable internet”, configured to prevent certain types of behavior (sending large volumes of email, for instance), unless a user is “trusted” through one sort or another of verification process. While such plans seem to contradict some of the wisdom underlying the creation of the Internet (dumb networks, the end-to-end principle, edge-based strategies), John and others have argued that some form of Internet accountability is neccesary to prevent governments from putting ill-considered and destructive constraints on how the Internet works.

The free market moves faster that national governments, and private companies are already working to balkanize the Internet by declaring parts of it “unsafe zones”. (Yes, the Macedonia/”balkanize” pun was intended. No, this is not an apology.) This form of blocking is harder to fight than government action – it's hard to know what leverage either the Macedonians, or open net advocates, have over companies that have decided that it's fiscally worthwhile to close their doors to certain nations.

I've noticed that I can't use most of my credit cards in Africa, especially West Africa, without getting panicked phonecalls from my card issuers. (Props to American Express, which has evidently figured out that I work in West Africa and that charging a hotel room in Accra doesn't mean that someone's committing fraud with my card.) At least I'm able to buy things with cash in Accra after Visa has decided that it's too risky for me to use my credit card. Users of some domain name registrars, for instance, in “risky nations” don't have the same recourse and policies like this cause some areas of the Internet to be wholly disconnected from each other. This is a dangerous trend, and I hope some of my Berkman colleagues will consider taking a look at this type of Internet filtering.

A week back, at the Madrid Democracy summit, I had a dinner conversation with friends that centered on the complications of professional journalists maintaining blogs. (The conversation began with a discussion of the Boston Globe's censure of Hiawatha Bray for political comments he made on his blog.) I argued that I wished that more journalists blogged, so I could triangulate between their “official” stories and their personal observations.

A friend participating in the conversation – who has forgotten more about journalism than I will ever know – argued that, while I was welcome to engage in such triangulation, it was unwise for me to wish it onto readers as a whole. He pointed out – correctly – that I'm a media junkie and argued that most readers aren't willing to triangulate between a journalist's personal statements and her reporting. Furthermore, he argued, if a journalist is behaving professionally, there's no need to know her biases because the reader should have no reason to question whether the reporter's perspective is coloring the story. Rather than push for more disclosure by journalists and more triangulation by “active readers”, why not just push for more responsible journalism?

I don't really disagree with my friend's arguments – it's just that I'm greedy. I want professional, unbiased reporting and I want to know as much about the reporter as he or she is willing to share. I don't want to triangulate all the time, and I'm most pleased when my triangulation reveals that a story is told fairly and well. But I really want to be able to check.

In our dinner conversation, one issue that came up was media consolidation – when every major city had multiple newspapers, most of them with a definable political bias, it was fairly easy to triangulate between various biased stories and get to a version of underlying events. To a certain extent, judicious use of Google News allows one to accomplish something similar – I found myself reading Google News closely yesterday, to see who was surprised or worried by the prospect of Wolfowitz becoming the head of the World Bank and who was not.

Unfortunately, most of the stories I'm interested in are reported by a single news source – usually the BBC, IRIN, AFP or the Christian Science Monitor. Triangulating between news sources is often hard to accomplish. Which makes me increasingly grateful for reporters who are blogging as well as reporting. In our dinner conversation, I pointed to Abraham McLaughlin of the Christian Science Monitor, who oftens blogs and reports the same trips he takes in Africa.

McLaughlin's story and post earlier this week give a good picture of what I hope for out of the synergy of blogging and journalism. Yesterday, McLaughlin posted a story about a candidate for the Zimbabwean parliament and his struggles to campaign in such a repressive nation. The story is surprisingly hopeful – the candidate, a white farmer displaced from his land – was able to hold a rally without being arrested or having his supporters threatened. (While this hardly seems like a great victory, you've got to cheer any movements towards openness in Zimbabwe.)

Lest one think that McLaughlin fully buys the statement by a ZANU-PF (ruling party) member that “This election will be freer and fairer than almost any in Zimbabwe's history – and many in Africa and the world,” McLaughlin's blog provides a different perspective. Written a day earlier, he gives a “Harper's Index” of the misery Zimbabweans are facing and the challenges a reporter faces reporting in the country:

I'm not sure that it's “professional” for McLaughlin to tell me about his rental car bill, or that people have asked him for help getting out of Zimbabwe. But I'm glad he did.

And suddenly, the world looks a few shades darker.

The World Bank is an easy target for activist critiques, but the Bank under Wolfensohn has made real progress is moving away from “supersized” projects that put nations deep in debt and towards funding projects that have good inputs from beneficiaries and grassroots. Wolfensohn has evidently communicated his desire to continue serving, but doesn’t have support from the White House.

Given the strong influence Wolfowitz had over American foreign policy under Bush’s first term, it’s hard to believe that this doesn’t reflect a major Bush administration effort to change the role and structure of the Bank.

Bloggers around the world, especially in the Middle East, are mourning the death of Zouhair Yahyaoui, a Tunisian journalist and founder of Tunezine, an activist, alternative magazine.

Zouhair was imprisoned for 18 months, starting in 2002, for “spreading false news”, because he posted opposition materials on his site. In 2003, he won Reporters Sans Frontiers cyber-freedom prize for his work. During his imprisonment, he went on several hunger strikes and may have been tortured. He died of a heart attack on Monday, at age 36.

I found Mohamed’s post from Cairo very moving, reminding us, “People really die for this.” ordoesitexplode.com has an excellent overview of Zouhair’s life and work, as does Hou-Hou blog, in French.

The irony of holding the second WSIS meeting in Tunis grows everyday.

And suddenly, the world looks a few shades darker.

The World Bank is an easy target for activist critiques, but the Bank under Wolfensohn has made real progress is moving away from “supersized” projects that put nations deep in debt and towards funding projects that have good inputs from beneficiaries and grassroots. Wolfensohn has evidently communicated his desire to continue serving, but doesn’t have support from the White House.

Given the strong influence Wolfowitz had over American foreign policy under Bush’s first term, it’s hard to believe that this doesn’t reflect a major Bush administration effort to change the role and structure of the Bank.

Bloggers around the world, especially in the Middle East, are mourning the death of Zouhair Yahyaoui, a Tunisian journalist and founder of Tunezine, an activist, alternative magazine.

Zouhair was imprisoned for 18 months, starting in 2002, for “spreading false news”, because he posted opposition materials on his site. In 2003, he won Reporters Sans Frontiers cyber-freedom prize for his work. During his imprisonment, he went on several hunger strikes and may have been tortured. He died of a heart attack on Monday, at age 36.

I found Mohamed’s post from Cairo very moving, reminding us, “People really die for this.” ordoesitexplode.com has an excellent overview of Zouhair’s life and work, as does Hou-Hou blog, in French.

The irony of holding the second WSIS meeting in Tunis grows everyday.