It’s high time I showed you all some fruit of our labor. What follows is the rough draft version of the education chapter. A few caveats before proceeding:

• The present rough draft is composed almost entirely from neweurasia posts. The exception is KZblog’s post, from which the title of the chapter comes. The neweurasia bloggers used in this rough draft are: Adam, Arthur, Ben, Irene, Ksenia, Maciula, Merdjen, Olesya, and Vadim. To see the original posts, just follow the link after each section.
• There is a bit of a preponderance of Kazakhstan-related material for the first half. This was a result of the material available as well as what I felt the chapter called for. Readers can expect a greater balance of materials in the finished book.
• The writing style I’ve used is intended to be “Economist-lite.”

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The BBC reports that blogging-related arrests total 64 since 2003. What should we make of this number? Let’s look at it in context: Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontieres, or RSF) reports that in 2007 86 print and broadcast journalists were killed in action — up 244% over five years. Not to mention 887 arrested, 1,511 physically attacked or threatened, and a disturbing 67 journalists kidnapped. In 2006 85 print and broadcast journalists and 32 media assistants were killed, 871 arrested, 1,472 physically attacked or threatened, and 56 kidnapped. With regards to us online journalists, citizens and “pros” together, in 2007 37 bloggers were arrested, 21 physically attacked, and 2,676 websites shut down or suspended.  (As if to prove the point, Elena reports today that the offices of Kyrgyzstani opposition newspaper De-Facto have been searched by police.)

RSF remarked,

“No country has ever seen more journalists killed than Iraq, with at least 207 media workers dying there since the March 2003 US invasion - more than in the Vietnam War, the fighting in ex-Yugoslavia, the massacres in Algeria or the Rwanda genocide.

“The Iraqi and US authorities — themselves guilty of serious violence against journalists — must take firm steps to end these attacks. Iraqi journalists are deliberately targeted by armed groups and are not simply the victims of stray bullets. The Iraqi government cannot immediately stop the violence but it can send a strong signal to the killers by doing all it can to seek them out and punish them.

“Somalia and Pakistan saw more journalists killed than they have for several years. Somalia is still very much a country of outlaws where the strongest rule and the media are easy targets. Journalists in Pakistan are caught in the crossfire between the army, Islamist militants and criminal gangs. The only good news of the past year is that for the first time in 15 years no journalists were killed in Colombia because of their work.”

What does this mean for the Stanosphere? As many of you know, neweurasia and Registan.net were both blocked in Uzbekistan in 2006. The situation for us in Turkmenistan isn’t very good, either. On the “pro” side of things, of course many of us are still mourning the loss of Alisher Saipov.

And yet, readers and writers all push on. Of course, in online citizen journalism, is there really a difference between readers and writers? There isn’t, and it is for this reason that ultimately censorship and violence against blogging cannot succeed.

On a positive note, Ben brought to my attention the book We are Iran: The Persian Blogs by Nasrin Alavi. Published in 2005, it put to lie the stereotype of Iranian apathy in the face of governmental oppression. Her book became an instant hit and sold hundreds of thousands of copies worldwide (a limited peak is available here).

Nothing very exciting to report for this week. Ben and I have been working on a sample chapter; it will be completed tomorrow.

I recently discovered the Online Journalism Blog, which I highly recommend to anyone interested in the possibilities of the internet for professional and citizen journalism.

Bruce Schimmel at the Philadelphia City Paper wrote some interesting insights about the future of paper-based journalism. Essentially, he argues that dailies are environmental disasters, yet democratic socities need them in order to be healthy.

Think about it: You chop down trees in Canada, and truck them to a mill. You ship tons of paper, thousands of miles to another manufacturing plant. Finally, you deliver a newspaper, most of which is ignored. And which ends up — if we’re lucky — in a recycling bin.

He also explores employment issues and editorial practices in dailies.  And that’s that for this week.

An interesting article from Expatica’s 10.03.2007 issue. neweurasia is mentioned inthe full article (which can be read here).

During a session in which Author of ‘Everything is miscellaneous’ David Weinberger debates with Andrew Keen, author of ‘The cult of the amateur’ on the influence of digital revolution on our society, Keen says the media needs to educate, inform and entertain rather than reflect the world; to simplify things rather than make them complex.

In this vein I’m going to attempt to give you, hopefully, clear fragments of what I took home from the event and plenty of links to lead you further.

Described as a professional provocateur, Keen argues that today’s internet is killing our culture and assaulting our economy and not “leading us to a democratised paradise” as assumed by some. Of course, “we want people to understand the world politically, culturally, economically, [but] is the chaos of the internet educational? Is it not “undermining credible media?” says Keen who aggressively defends the authority of professionals and experts.

“It doesn’t mean that amateurs are worthless, but it means that these [experts] are the people who can really use this technology for everyone’s benefit,” he says. “We need to manage technology to our benefit.”

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Still building upon the Philadelphia framework, I have revised the titles and focii of the cross-regional thematic chapters we have in mind. I would love to know what everyone thinks of them.

While working on this, I’ve been listening to Clint Mansell’s soundtrack to The Fountain. It’s luscious, very creative, and inspiring music. I recommend the film to anyone seeking a visual thrill and cinematic philosophizing. I don’t think Daron Aronofsky is capable of making a bad film — and who knew Hugh Jackman could act?

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Building upon the Philadelphia framework, I have revised the title and focus of each country-specific chapter in preparation for the larger work to come. I would love to hear everyone’s thoughts.

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I came upon this beautiful little reflection in the seemingly very short-lived weblog of one kzgroupv, a.k.a., Crazy Gamer.  The weblog dealt with information dissemination within Central Asian and internet contexts. 

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Thomas Carlyle famously wrote, “The history of the world is but the biography of great men.” Of course, his thesis is wrong. Personalities certainly play a role in the ever-unfolding drama of humanity, but they are only one contigency in an immense dramatis personae of contigencies. But try telling that to the government of Turkmenistan.

Few societies have been as deeply shaped by the Carlyle thesis as was the Soviet Union, and of its Central Asian progeny Turkmenistan has elevated the totalitarian legacy to a fine art. Calligraphy would be more precise, considering the country’s Islamic heritage and Niyazov’s attempts to usurp the Koran with his own revelation, the Ruhnama.

One of the great faults of the Carlyle thesis and the ideological systems born from it is that the idea of the “great man” does not, and it cannot, deal with the problem of mortality. With its nomadic-Islamic heritage and its unique geographical setting, Turkmenistan presents an interesting case study (and crucible) to see what happens to a Carlylian society after its hero and leader has passed on.

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The fascinating thing about the blogosphere is how it simulates “real time” or “real life” interpersonal connections. I’ve never met Claire, Adam, or any of you face to face. Ben and I have spent a grand total of three and a half months over the last five years in physical company with each other. Our connections have ben sewn almost entirely through e-mails and VoIP. Yet, Ben is easily one of my best friends (not to mention an inspiration) and I feel very welcomed by everyone in the neweurasia community.

As several of you know, I’ve undergone a number of personal crises in the last few weeks, that is, other than scrambling to finish a major assignment for my thesis and then getting robbed at gunpoint. Fortunately, none of it has been catastrophic, but it has been emotionally debilitating and intellectually immobilizing. Yet, though neweurasia is a professional community, meaning we all have responsibilities to each other, to projects, and to the broader journalistic endeavor, everyone has been patient with me: you have treated me as a person and a colleague, not just another knowledge-worker cogging away in the digital mill. You have given me the space and time I have needed to sort things out. For this, I want to say thank you, and to reaffirm my commitment to CyberChaikhana, however long it takes to complete.

And so I think it appropriate to continue our “insider coverage” of CyberChaikha by focusing on Tajikistan’s chapter, tentatively entitled “Hardships.” Tajikistan is a country where interpersonal connections are of paramount concern and utility to its citizens, given that the national infrastructure is constantly failing and civil society is still struggling with the multifarious and subtle effects of the civil war. As with last week’s post, what you’re about to read is very raw, or as Ben and I call it, the “skeleton.”

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A few people have asked us to better describe how we go about picking the best posts and designing the chapters accordingly. We thought that it is more than appropriate to share with you how our working document (what we call the “skeleton”) looks like at this stage and which way it is likely to evolve in the future. The next few posts that will be posted on this blog show our methodology in designing the framework from which I (Schwartz) will take off doing the bulk of the editing work.

Let’s start with our country-specific chapter for Uzbekistan. It proved very difficult to find one “unifying” theme along which we can organise the posts, hence the working title, “The Enigma.”  Read the rest of this entry »