 Great. Well, thanks, everyone, for being with us. We are really lucky to have a friend collaborator and someone that I admire great deal, Anthony Lohnstein, who is a Sydney-based journalist. I'd just like to explain today's weather. We always try to be as hospitable as possible in Cambridge. You may be aware that Australia has been having major drought issues. We thought rain would be a nice change of pace, so great drizzle was about as good as we could do on this. Anthony is a guy who writes on a wide range of topics with very little fear of generating discussion, controversy, and debate, which is a happy, happy thing, and something that I suspect will be really enjoyable within the context of this room. Someone who's well known for his first bestselling book, My Israel Question, putting forward some really interesting interpretations on issues of Israel and Palestine, is now taking on a subject near and dear to many of our hearts in a book called The Blogging Revolution, which is looking at blogging in repressive states and societies, and raising some really interesting questions about the roles of both professional and citizen media. So I'm thrilled that he can be with us today, and with that I will shut up and turn the microphone in this direction. Thank you, Ethan. I left Sydney on Sunday, Saturday, and it was 90 degrees, so when I arrived here it was a little bit cooler than that. You might say, hence my cold, so forgive me for that. Let me first start off by just thanking the Berkman Centre for inviting me, everybody involved, Emma, Ethan, et cetera, et cetera. It's an honour to be here. I wanted to do this informally. I wanted to start off by reading a short essay that I've written, and then I think the best thing is to have a debate rather than me just talking and preaching, which is probably fun for me, but not so good for everybody else. I thought it'd be good just to engage in some of these discussions, which I think are really relevant, which don't get in my view enough discussion in the western mainstream media. So allow me just to read this short piece. Internet censorship is something that only happens in non-democratic states. Regimes that want to crush free speech routinely employ automated and human-directed methods to silence dissent and politically uncomfortable material. Jails are filled across the world with bloggers and dissidents who challenge authoritarian rule. These voices are rarely heard in our media, especially if they are critical of western foreign policy dictates. Alas, if only this were true. My government, the Australian government, led by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, is currently proposing the imposition of a mandatory filtering process to, quote, protect Australian families and kids from some material that is currently on the net, end quote, namely child pornography and ultra-violent sites. It may sound benign enough, but the countries leading internet service providers, free speech lobbyists and independent parliamentarians have all responded with outrage that such a proposal might be implemented. Aside from the question, of course, of current technology being incapable of monitoring the long list of websites that could allegedly breach Australian law, around 10,000 according to our government, there's the freedom of speech angle. A number of politicians in Australia have advocated blocking online gaming sites, general pornography sites, euthanasia sites and pro-anorexia sites. What next? It's not hard to imagine, in my view, a push to block sites that allegedly support terrorism. Take Hamas, a democratically elected government in Palestine yet regarded in the West as a terrorist organization. For many individuals around the world, myself included, Hamas is not a terrorist group and should be engaged, but will overzealous politicians make it illegal to view the organization's websites. The militant Shia political group Hezbollah may find similar problems in years to come, too, as could Islamist organizations that challenge American foreign policy. These are political freedoms extinguished under the guise of protecting society from terrorism. Despite these ominous possibilities, Australia is not one of the world's worst internet freedom abusers. For my book, The Blocking Revolution, I traveled in 2007 to Iran, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Cuba and China to examine the role of the web in repressive states and the involvement of Western multinationals in assisting censorship. Most importantly, I wanted to challenge the thesis that the introduction of the web automatically brings Western-inspired democratic ideals to a society. This is, of course, deluded fantasy and wishful thinking propagated by any number of conservative think tags in the US of A, and dare I say in Australia as well. I spoke in these nations with writers, bloggers, dissidents, politicians, citizens, men and women, activists, conservatives and liberals. How did they view their relationship with the ruling elite? How representative were their voices in the society and how possible was it for minorities to be heard? What was their attitude towards the Western powers, especially the US, and for that matter, my own country, Australia? In Egypt, for example, the country receives the second highest amount of US foreign aid annually after Israel, money that is predominantly spent on security, allegedly, to monitor and subdue the rising Muslim brotherhood political insurgency. And many bloggers told me they resented this money being given to repress them. President Hosni Mubarak is highly unpopular. It remains on the White House Christmas list. This, in my view, won't change with Barack Obama being president. Simply put, true democracy in the Middle East would likely see the election of Islamist parties in virtually every country, hostile to the US and Israel. For this reason alone, in my view, the maintenance of the status quo, dictatorships that provide the West with both stability and energy resources will continue. Blogger anger towards this Faustian bargain was palpable everywhere I went. Now, September 11, 2001 should have been the perfect opportunity for the Western media to hear the grievances of the Muslim world. With notable exceptions, indigenous voices were excluded then and still remain largely absent from the pages of the world's leading papers. The underlying belief, rarely acknowledged but undoubtedly true, is that many Western editors only want to hear foreign news reported through a Western lens. Underlying racism, in my view, yes. Unless a place or event is seen and heard by a Western reporter, it isn't legitimate and therefore unprovable. When was the last time we read regular reports from on-the-ground bloggers in war zones or difficult-to-reach areas, rather than the occasional dispatch from a visiting, usually Western journalists? It happens all too infrequently. A general consensus around the globe was that political and military meddling by Washington and London, and for that matter, my own country, was making the job of real Democrats much more difficult. Democracy was a term defined differently in every nation, but virtually nobody shunned the idea of more freedom of speech, freedom of association and freedom of the press. As one blogger told me in Tehran, quote, most of the people I know are in favor of reform, not revolution, because people here are too tired to experience another revolution, end quote. And I found the same message echoed throughout the countries I visited, the desire to experience incremental change without, I note, without foreign involvement. I was reminded of a comment from leading Middle East journalist Robert Fisk, who told Australian TV in 2005, quote, The Arab world would love some of this shiny, beautiful democracy which we possess and enjoy. They would love some of it. They would love some freedom that many of them would like freedom from us, from our armies, from our influence, and that's the problem. What Arabs want is justice as much as democracy, end quote, and we, in my view, don't want to give it to them. In every nation I visited, bloggers were starting to unpack issues that remained largely hidden from public view. Women in Egypt were campaigning against the tradition of female genital mutilation. Activists in Cuba were highlighting the repressive nature of the Castro regime and the counterproductive policies of the US administration towards them, which maybe we hope Obama may change. Opposition figures in Damascus, Syria were blogging about state-imposed web filtering. Sad Arabian women, blocked from driving or working in the US-backed dictatorship, were using the web to express their desire for greater human rights. Iranian hip-hoppers were distributing their banned beats by file-sharing software, and Chinese dissidents were protesting the role of Western multinational, such as Google, Cisco, Yahoo, and Microsoft, in the gibious role of assisting state censorship. Blogging is not in itself revolutionary, but the act of self-expression online can be. Although the vast majority of bloggers in non-democratic nations are not dissecting politics due to disinterest or fear of being caught by the regimes, I was fascinated to hear why certain people courageously risked their scalps to challenge the iron will of dictators. Like dissidents in the former Soviet Union, who only had limited resources and reached a fraction of the people bloggers can affect, online activists find the medium intoxicating because of its reach and global impact. Many bloggers I met were conscious of a local international audience. They wanted their own regime to feel pressure and change policies, but also generate noise around the world. It was the realization for me that outside influences can, if used judiciously and respectfully, can be invaluable in supporting democratic movements in so-called repressive regimes. For example, many bloggers in Saudi Arabia desperate to convince their own citizens of the benefits of a moderate political Islam are using the web to slowly pressure the fundamentalist state to not fear democratic elections and a free press. It's an uphill struggle, of course, not helped by a western world, including all our countries in the west, determined to keep the old pumping non-stop in forever, or as long as it lasts, anyway. Earlier week goes by now when the media is not filled with the stories of bloggers being imprisoned by unsavory regimes. Take the Burmese blogger, Ney von Lutt, who recently received over 20 years for possession of a banned video and having a blog to express his concerns about the increasing difficulty of Burmese people in voicing their opinions since the massive protests in 2007. This regime, in a desperate move to stop images and news of abuse leaking to the world, regularly shuts down the entire web system for days on end, effectively cutting off the country from the outside world. This is only possible in places, of course, where the internet is not central to the running of an economy like China. Instead there, the powers in Beijing have instituted the so-called golden shield to filter out unwanted material. With the collusion of western companies such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and many others in China's Great Firewall, the role of these multinationals is largely ignored in the western media. In my book, I examine the various excuses justifications and defences offered by them when explaining their actions in the so-called quasi-communist state. The real reason clearly is the fact that there are now over 250 million web users and growing at 6 million every month. Such potential profits make ethical considerations seem quaint in boardrooms across the world. However, the recent launch of the Global Network Initiative, a code of conduct for corporations on privacy and free speech created by a coalition of human rights groups, media development, research organisations, internet and communications companies such as Google to ensure that companies acknowledge their, quote, responsibility to respect and protect the freedom of expression and privacy rights that users, end quote, will be a test of necessary transparency. It's no longer acceptable for web companies to claim that they are merely complying with laws in a particular country. International laws and norms must be applied with the pressure from the US Congress, if necessary, or for that matter, the EU. Recently in Melbourne, Australia, a number of individuals gathered to consider a proposal to design an ethical labelling system for media distribution. Ellie Rennie, who's a research fellow at Melbourne Swinburne University's Institute for Social Research, said the following, and I quote, If we think of Fair Trade Coffee, for example, we know that behind Fair Trade Coffee, there's a very elaborate and trustworthy system of workers' rights, of ethical farming. So this is similar in that we need to label on that media in order to determine what kind of media we might be using in the way that we buy Fair Trade Coffee because, and here's the important part, we believe in what it stands for. End quote. Could such standards be applied to web companies operating in authoritarian regimes? While we all rely on Google and related companies, how often do we consider their actions in non-Western nations? And as importantly, is this knowledge they are gaining in such lands likely to be implemented against us sometime in the near future? Aside from the issue of oppressive censorship, my work acknowledges that blogging culture cannot be seen to represent societies as a whole. In the main, there are middle-class men and women who are with access to information and technology far above the average, generally poor citizen. One of the dangers, of course, also with my work is that the presumption that repression only occurs in so-called repressive states. Increasingly, Western governments are attempting to monitor and filter information on the web. Take the UK, who recently announced plans to give security agencies and police unprecedented and legally binding powers to ban the media from reporting matters of national security. Or take Argentina. Since 2006, over 100 people have successfully secured temporary restraining orders that direct Google and Yahoo Argentina to erase the results of search queries. Judges, public officials, models, actors in World Cup soccer star and national team head coach Diego Maradona have used the law to silence criticism. Indeed, even in your own country here, US Democrat, supposed Democrat, Senator Joe Lieberman this year successfully pressured YouTube owners Google to remove videos from, quote, Islamist terrorist organizations, end quote. A recent article in the Economist magazine attempted to explain the fall of independent blogging. The medium the magazine stated, quote, has entered the mainstream, which, as with every new medium in history, looks to its pioneers suspiciously like death, and it went on. Go on, in other words, is any sense that blogging as a technology is revolutionary, subversive, or otherwise exalted, and this upsets some of its pioneers, end quote. Alas, like so much in the Economist, his thesis may be partly true in the West, but totally inaccurate in the rest of the world. Heralding the death of blogging is both premature and ignores the vast importance of our online media in developing countries. The US writer Clay Scherke writes in his book, here comes everybody, the power of organizing without organizations, that quote, communications tools such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, blogging and others, don't get socially interesting until they get technologically boring, end quote. In other words, as he writes, and I've seen around the world too, it's only now becoming possible to see and hear online the words of indigenous communities in Bolivia, dispossessed voters in Kenya, sex workers in India, or for that matter, individuals in many other countries. Letting people speak and write for themselves without a western lens is one of the triumphs of blogging. Its culture is unlike that of any previous social movement. Disjointed and organized and proudly so, its aims are vague, while many want the right to be critical of the media and political dysfunction, others simply crave the ability to date and listen to subversive music, and that, in my view, in itself is revolutionary for much of the world. Thank you. That may be more provocation packed into 20 minutes than we usually get in this room, but... Really good. Yeah. No, absolutely. So, who wants to start with the firing squad? Yes. A good pastor that I could absorb. Is there some copy way I can get a copy? There will be, yes. Pardon? Yes, in a word, yes. Okay. Where? On my website. I'll post it this afternoon. Yes, absolutely. And that's just my name. It's all there. Yes. Well, I'll start with a question. No one else is going to throw a hand up. One of the things that I find very, very interesting in the book is that you have a great deal of concern about how the developing world gets framed through western media. And one of the things that you seem to be really hoping for out of blogs is this idea that we're going to get an unfiltered, uncensored, direct view of what's going on on the ground. As this happens, this is something that I know a little bit about and have been working on for a little while. And I got to tell you, I'm not seeing a lot of people queuing up to look at my direct uncensored, unfiltered view of the ground. And so I'm wondering in some ways, if you're talking about a supply problem, you're actually faced with a demand problem. Which is to say that you're essentially saying that there's this giant unmet need for unfiltered views of what people think in dissident populations, whether it's in Egypt or elsewhere. And I'm not seeing it. I'm not seeing people sort of queuing up to pay attention to it. So there's at least two ways that you can sort of take this question. One is to say, no, you're wrong. They just don't know how to find it yet. Or another is to say, well, sure, and they're going to be helped and amplified by media around the world and sort of figure out how that works in it. But what is the relationship? What's an ideal relationship between these people around the world who are raising their voices? And by the way, probably raising them in Arabic, not in English. Who are doing them in communities that probably don't have enough bandwidth that we're going to be able to get real-time video out of them anytime soon. How do these people actually connect to people around the world who could change policy or change the structures that you live in? I guess the best way to answer that would be a few-fold. Firstly, the idea that a lot of the stuff that you're writing, for example, is not getting good hits, I'm not quite sure what... That's unfortunate. And it should, because I think your stuff is fantastic. But I guess I see a bit of a different way, Ethan, to you. A lot of the sites that I'm talking about, people I met, et cetera, et cetera, around the world, their websites, not all of them, but many of them are very popular within the countries themselves. Are they being read widely in Australia, in the U.S.? Probably not. I'd probably read them who are interested like you and me, whatever, but not massively. I agree with you. One of the things I think that I see my job as a journalist is to try and talk to other journalists in the Western media and actually say, you should be paying more attention to these kind of people. Now, it doesn't mean therefore they always will, but I think increasingly as resources from the so-called Western media is declining and the ability to actually get a sense of what's happening in country X or Y, I would think, maybe naively, that it's likely that inevitably these people will be sought out more so than just the usual suspects. Now, I could be accused as they have been that I'm a Western journalist who went to these countries and wrote about it and came back and wrote a book about it. Yes. However, I like to think and people can judge whether I'm successful or not. I've actually given individuals in these countries a chance to be heard in their own voice rather than only just filtered through my own. Maybe people, you might disagree that I've done that successfully. I don't know. But I think one of the key issues I have with the sense of who's actually listening is that if you speak to many people that I have done in the Middle East and elsewhere, and China is a good example of this, particularly China, where during the run-up to the Games in August in Beijing, there was a great deal of debate, obviously, about the torch relay and the Tibetan uprising. And a lot of Chinese bloggers were saying, as you would know, that no one's listening to us over there, i.e. the West and vice versa. Now, you're right, it didn't work that well in that example, but that to me doesn't mean that it can't work better next time. One of the things that I'd like to think people discovered from that experience, both in the West and in China was, there was so much shouting across each other. People in China were saying, you know, you guys in the West don't like the idea that we're growing as a world power, essentially. And the West, I was saying, you guys are repressed, essentially. And there's truth in both of those arguments. But the reality is, I think, that in global voices, and I've done a lot about this, language is a key problem here. And until, you know, generally speaking, I found as well that if I was speaking to bloggers in, say, Iran who spoke Farsi, as most people do, clearly their access to the world community is tiny compared to someone who, for example, speaks English. Having said that, what I found interesting was, and say, the Iranian diaspora in Canada, the US and even Australia, they mean people who are translating Farsi blogs into English. Now, generally speaking, that's being read predominantly by probably other Iranians who are living outside their own countries. But I do think, and I see this in a good example, one example. After the US election, there was a piece in The New York Times about what are Arab bloggers saying about the election. Now, that doesn't itself mean that blogging has arrived in the mainstream. But it's an example. It wouldn't have happened, I suspect, after Bush's win in 2004. This would have been terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible. Okay. There was a sense of hope misplaced or otherwise that Obama has won. That to me is a sign that I think those voices are at least not irrelevant, and they're not necessarily just through, and they're generally not a Western voice. Wouldn't it be likely that someone would have written the, you know, let's go back eight years in time rather than four years in time. Isn't it likely that if we picked up the newspaper in November 4th, 2000, we would have seen people doing man on the streets in Egypt saying, you know, what do you think about the election of President Bush? Yeah. In some ways, aren't we getting like less democratic and less inclusive? The man on the street is likely to be a far more diverse set than your friends and mine in the Egyptian blogosphere who look a lot more like the people in this room than they look like the average Egyptian man on the street. I think you need to do both. I agree. As I say in my book and I said in my piece, anyone who claims that blogging represents eight people is delusional. It doesn't. I think in some ways the idea of speaking to a so-called man on the street, a woman on the street is, I wouldn't say it's more representative than speaking to a blogger. I don't actually agree with that because, you know, some random person on the street's view, you know, I think it's dangerous also to talk about the Arab street, which the U.S. talks about all the time, which means what? That theoretically anti-U.S., which is probably entirely untrue, but critical of the U.S. foreign policy. But the idea, I think, that within the country themselves, I mean, look at the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, for example. Although in the West, they are generally shunned or the Western elites, they're shunned, they're massively popular and their blogging in their communities actually are very strong. They represent a lot of people in that country. So, and interestingly enough, when The New York Times did a story about Arab bloggers' responses to election, I'm not sure if it's deliberate or not, the Brotherhood's views weren't put in there and they quoted Egyptian bloggers because of that. Now I don't know if that was deliberate or just accidental, who knows. But I think Egypt in some ways is the best example of a place where there is a thriving community which is not just typical middle-class people because of Brotherhood it's not. Like a lot of people who, you know, who, for example, are put in jail, their families are blogging and these people often are very, very poor people. Not all, but some of them are. So I'm not, as I said, I'm not evangelist and saying blogs are about to open up the world to, you know, wonderful group hugging. I'm not saying that. But I do think that you maybe underestimate the effect that some of these writings have on journalists that I know. Now, as to what it's contributing to their work, that's a good question. You answered with my key concession, which was that you're not looking at a world, you know, postjournalists where perhaps, you know, maybe you're the last one standing, I believe, put the rest of them up against the wall. No, no, I mean, look, the fact is, you know, I think most journalists do a terrible job in their jobs. I mean, it's why most of my friends are not journalists. I think most journalists generally like to live in a bubble and they feel comfortable living in a bubble. That's fine. That's good for them and that's lovely. But that's not so journalism interests me. And, you know, because I speak to bloggers, doesn't make me somehow a better journalist. I don't mean it like that. But I think there is a sense that a lot of media, especially in the last eight years in the U.S. and elsewhere, always focuses through what the interests of the U.S. are. The New York Times is a classic case of that where fascinating paper, very interesting, but every story about Latin America is about, is this good or bad for the U.S.? That's not journalism. That's basically hackery. You know, disguise as some kind of objective reporting. It's not. Let's expand the conversation. I see Hans waiting to come up. I'm going to start with Dr. Weinberg, even though he put his hand down. We're addressing Hans for his tire. We're going to get these guys. I have peripheral vision as well. This is rough. Do you have examples, evidence and examples of a positive, I'm using that term relatively carefully, but a positive effect of the sort that you are claiming of that already occurring, of countries and incidents where the presence of the blogger's view has actually affected the change towards more openness and more free speech? In a word, yes. Egypt is a good example of this, I think. Again, I don't want to overplay the fact that Egyptian bloggers are suddenly revolutionized as a society, but the issue of police torture in Egypt is a classy example that police torture has been going on for decades, it's still going on now. But, and as someone said to me there, after decades and decades of protesting on the sides of the street against torture, nothing was happening. When certain footage which got out of policemen who had been filming their essentially raping male detainees in police stations, and this information was distributed around on mobile phones, that kind of information got out. It was posted on many dissident or so-called dissident bloggers, websites, and the effect of that was that eventually the government was forced to respond, the response being that some of those police were put on trial, that I found guilty. Now, police torture still goes on. It hasn't changed, but the difference is that, as people said to me there, everyone knew police torture was going on. It wasn't a particular secret, but it was never really discussed. It was just kind of a given that this was happening and it was sort of secret and no one knew about it. The fact that now people are talking about, in the alternative media, it actually forced some of the so-called more state media to respond. Again, I'm not overplaying, you know, the Mubarak regime revolutionizing itself because of this, but there was a sense of being on the back foot for a brief time because of what bloggers were doing, and a relatively few bloggers were doing. And Iran's not a good example. I mean, the situation in Iran again can be overplayed with how important the bloggers' fear is. In the last three years, it's like when Din and Jed has come in, he's undoubtedly cracked down on dissidents, writers, bloggers, journalists, things that are not that good at the moment, put it mildly. And it looks like he's going to win again in the election next year, the way things seem to be going at the moment. But there's no doubt that there are far more discussions going on, predominantly in Farsi, I might add, about issues such as women's rights, many other things which really get any press in the West. Now, again, it's often conversations between so-called conservatism and so-called reformists. There's issues about sex that are happening online, about religious affiliation, about the Iraq war in ways of not simply defending the regime. And I think, again, not overplaying that, but there is, those voices are there and they generally don't get much press in the West because they're not in English, because they're in Farsi. Unless they get translated by, say, global voices or someone else or some blogger friends of mine in Canada, no one's going to know about it. But I think there is a sense that those issues are being debated. And I think one of the responsibilities of Western journalists to write about Iran is rather than making every story about supposed terrorism and nuclear issues in Israel, these issues are being discussed. And don't be afraid to write about them, and they should, because the information's there. It is to themselves and also to the larger world. I think Al Jazeera's had a major effect. I mean, it's interesting, Al Jazeera English versus Al Jazeera Arabic, though, is an important distinction. Al Jazeera Arabic initially, when it started, was far more, shall we say, bullsy than it is now. It's certainly been muted to some extent. I think by extensive U.S. pressure for year after year after year. And Al Jazeera English equally, although I think it's far better than the BBC, it's more interesting, it's more worldly, it's more global. Actually, again, is still sometimes hesitant when it comes to some issues. Having said all that, satellite television in some ways has probably had more effect than the web in many of these countries. It reaches far more people. It's actually, it was easy to have a TV, they have a computer, for example. I think one of the things that I found in somewhere like Syria, which was fascinating, was that a lot of people who are watching Al Jazeera or Al Arabiya, other Arabic stations are actually seeing stories about their own regimes and then actually sometimes taking that view to be more skeptical about their own country as well. The web, of course, as I said, generally speaking, can be accused, and rightly so sometimes, of being too much about middle-class people, talking to middle-class people. And yes, a lot of people who watch satellite television are not just middle-class people, they're people watching in refugee camps, for example, in Lebanon, which I saw a few years ago. So I think there is very much a belief that satellite TV, and I should add, of course, and for that reason, most Arab states have banned Al Jazeera journalists from being there, including Iraq. And it sort of saddens me that before 9-11, the US government thought Al Jazeera was a wonderful thing. And after 9-11, after they arguably killed two US journalists, one in Al Jazeera journalists, one in Afghanistan, one in Iraq, Al Jazeera was regarded as a threat, which to me is a good thing. I think it's important that media provokes rather than simply placates what the government wants. But no, I think Al Jazeera's had a major effect, yes. And many people I spoke to, let me finish on this, who I spoke to were saying that often the state-run media has been forced to copy some of the techniques that Al Jazeera has been putting out because they realize that state-run media is not being watched that much anymore, because it's just sort of stayed boring, hasn't had the same look for like 20 years. Awesome. Hi. Hi. I have actually a multilayer question and observation in terms of surprise. Last project here. In terms of media, we're in full agreement. We both have a problem with western media in general, particularly American media. You're right. Everything that is reported is ultimately, when you do the abstraction, it's about us. Let's say not for us. It's not really what's about them. And the reality there also is that as much as I'd like to pound on the media, some objective facts, for example, the journalism is dying. Foreign bureaus are shrinking by the day. They're relying heavily on freelancers rather than dedicated bureaus, which is something I learned through trying to reach out to them. But another major problem that I do have with western media is that they buy heavily into the view of defining Muslims and Arabs, us, in light of the geopolitical conflicts, Israel, Palestine, Iraq. I strongly take issue with that because, as a matter of fact, this is a problem. I'm from Mauritania, for example, and a lot of people of the western wing of the Arab world will tell you very frankly, this is a very painful story, but not my problem. Please don't define me through it. And it becomes even more complicated for me as here in the American context, an American by choice, Muslim American, whenever I want to engage the press and the media, they reduce my identity into are you pro-Hamas or are you against Hamas? Which, by the way, I believe that Hamas and Hezbollah are wholly and entirely terrorist groups. They're not exactly going to bring about the kind of freedoms that we enjoy here in the West for these populations. Now, in terms of, for bloggers, what is a positive message that we can get out there into working the system? We've made the observation of discovering the limitations of the system, but how can we work it to harness it to project the kind of messages that we would like them to be reporting on? Real cases of things that are happening on the ground. Endless stories happen every day. People spend time reporting on whether Israel and the Palestinian sign of peace treaty, but I haven't yet seen yet a single report in Western media about cases of slavery in the last five years in Mauritania but the fact that Jordanian woman could not pass citizenship to her children from marriage to a foreigner. How can we work the system to using blogging and new media? That's a very long, difficult question to answer. Let me say a few things about that. One of the things, I guess, in relation, you mentioned Israel-Palestine, so I'll just mention that briefly because I'm not really here to talk about that, but I've got a few things to say about it. One of the problems, I think, is that so much of the Middle East is defined through that conflict, and I'm someone who writes about that extensively too, so I'm probably at fault as much as anyone else, but it is very much a sense, as everyone here would know, or you certainly would know, that the Israelis are good, the Arabs are bad. Now, in my view, actually it's kind of a combination of both, but nonetheless, there is a sense, I think, that, for example, the vast majority, in fact, virtually every Western journalist in Israel, Palestine, is based in Israel. In Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, there's about a handful of journalists who are based in the West Bank, let alone in Gaza. There's virtually none. There's only a handful. So by definition, if you spend most of your life mixing with Israelis in Israel, of course your perspective is going to be sympathetic to them. And I'm not saying that those journalists shouldn't be there, but there should be at least some living somewhere else, like in the Ramallah or speak the language for that matter, indeed. I think one of the things that can happen is that it's really, and one would hope, maybe, that an Obama administration will shift this just in a more societal way. Not every story about the Middle East has to be focused through the terrorism prism, that if one reads, as I said before, about Iran, and there are exceptions to this, but most of the stories you read about Iran are only about the nuclear issue, terrorism, the leaders are nutter, et cetera, et cetera. And there are far more interesting things going on there. Those issues are not irrelevant. And I think what can happen, and my experience has had some success to either pressure journalists or idea of creating perspectives and giving ideas, actually maybe giving story ideas to journalists who are there, or for that matter, saying... I mean, you mentioned about foreign bureaus. The only organization, AP, actually, in recent years, has increased some foreign bureaus. That's an exception rather than the rule, as you know most of them are shutting down in New York Times, et cetera, et cetera. I don't see any change in the coming years. That's going to really make any difference. I mean, the New York Times, amongst other papers, they're dying. We all know they're dying. I mean, New York Times will exist in some form, but in its current form, it's like sort of watching a slow moving car crash. And its resources are being more and more squeezed. So I guess the simple answer is, and I think trying to convince journalists as hard as it may be, because a lot of my friends, when I listen to this either, not everything revolves around terrorism. And of course, a definition of terrorism, and we can disagree or agree about how muscle has both, but revolves around so-called terrorist groups who are going to affect U.S. foreign policy. The world is not just about U.S. foreign policy, and so much of the Western media, Washington Post, New York Times, in the U.S., I don't think most Americans realize that the way they're viewed in, say, the rest of the world is through papers like the New York Times. And they kind of say to me and other people, I'm sure you as well, why is everything revolving around what Washington wants? And that's myopic and short-sighted and actually creates more hatred towards the U.S. than most I think Americans realize. I'm going to give the mic over to Jillian with the promise that she's not going to ask a terrorism question, but I also want to make sure that we get back to a question for you, which was part of Nasser's question, which is what can bloggers do within this medium to be more effective? So we'll give it over to Jillian, but we're coming back to that one and you're not avoiding that one, so use moderators prerogative if need be. Okay, I'll make this one quick. I spent much of the weekend reading the book, and I really enjoyed it, but I do have a question about Syria in particular. I noticed that you spoke with Joshua Landis and a couple bloggers, but for people who aren't aware, the Syrian blogosphere is enormous. It's in Arabic and English and maybe perhaps other languages, but it's also heavily filtered. And so I was just wondering why only those major bloggers, Joshua Landis, who is not Syrian, he's American, I believe, why not delve deeper into the Syrian blogosphere? I suppose a simple answer that is, like in any country that I went to, I had to sort of make choices about who I spoke to, and there's no doubt that in Syria particularly, I possibly could have spoken to more bloggers about what I was writing about. I acknowledge that. But like anywhere, if you go to a country for a limited amount of time, there are limitations, I guess, of how many people I can speak to, and also I suppose I found we maybe disagree about, to some extent, the Syrian blogosphere. I think, yes, it's filtered quite heavily, although not as much as say, Iran or other countries are, but I actually don't see it as having as much, and maybe you disagree with me, impact on society as say, Iran or Egypt, for example, within the country themselves, itself. So I guess my simple answer that is, I could have chosen more people, and like anywhere, I guess I had to make choices about who I spoke to, and if I had more time, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I suppose one of the things that I found about Syria, more than any other, most other place in the Middle East was, I felt, and this is open to interpretation, that the blogging community there was not as vibrant as in other Middle East countries. I might be wrong. You think I am. Yeah, yeah, okay. I do understand what you're saying. Yeah. I mean, Iran certainly has more. Iran's blogosphere certainly has more. And I suppose that to some extent, I could also be accused, maybe justifiably so, of being a Western journalist who didn't spend five years that I spent a month there, and all those criticisms are totally legitimate. I mean, I have to take that on board. And like with any journalist or someone who is not going to live there or immerse oneself for months or years, I acknowledge the limitations of the craft. I'll put it that way. Sorry, just so you know, the microphone, we've had a couple people email in to mention that they want to hear the questions as well as the responses. So that's why we've been somewhat religious about passing the mic around this time. And a big hello to John Bracken out there. We love you, John. I was actually about to ask the same question as David did. So let me kind of rephrase it. I was actually born in the, well, oppressive regime in Poland. When I was five, this movement, Solidarity movement just burst. And that was in short period that was a huge success. Like 10 million people joined it in a nation which was 35 million at that time. So one third of the whole population just supported the movement in just a couple of months. It happened just in a couple of months. So what I think that the main reason why it was so successful was not that New York Times supported it even though it did, of course. Like all of the western newspapers and all of the western governments, the reason was that it was heavily supported by the people within the country. In the medium term it failed because finally the regime managed to suppress it after a year. But in the long term it won again, because I live in a democratic country. And in fact I haven't seen any similar movements ever seen. I mean we have, we didn't have, I mean the people in Poland in 80 didn't have internet. They didn't have cellphones but they managed to gather like 10 million of people in just two or three months to stand against the regime. So my question is why is it, what do you think? Why is it that despite we have all these beautiful technology, technological tools, why anything similar like the solidarity movement in 80 hasn't happened since? Why is it? Let me answer that in a few ways. The first thing to say would be that I don't claim that blogging communities or online activist communities in any of these countries have massive mainstream support. I don't say that. I think often, in fact generally speaking they don't. I think as often as I said a mistake that one presumes that because people are writing as dissidents so to speak therefore they have a lot of support for different reasons. I think it's easier to some extent and Poland is a unique example of what happened a few decades ago but one of the things I talk about in the book and I've written elsewhere is that a lot of people who are blogging are not dissidents. They're people who incredibly support the regime. The Iranian regime for example has been very clever in setting up a massive network of bloggers who generally re-pro-regime who are often fighting online with those who are against the regime. So I'm not claiming for a second that there is massive support for the blogosphere behind these people. Having said that the question of how these individuals are trying to get more support. Look at a situation like say Ukraine a few years ago. The so-called Orange Revolution which in my view was a bit of a sham. Manly supported by the US government. Here we are a few years later and it's basically collapsed. The situation in Lebanon was the same as the Saudi Revolution. Four years later it's a sham. It collapsed. It collapsed because there wasn't massive public support and it sort of fractured along racial, ethnic, political lines. Okay. So to me bloggers can play or online media plays one role amongst many. Everyone I spoke to would always say that we don't claim that online media or bloggers on its own is going to somehow bring down a regime. No one's saying that. That I spoke to. Often it's going to be very old school. It's still going in the streets. It's still doing things that are more traditional. Having said that it's now easier and we see this in say Egypt with the use of Facebook. It's now easier often to get people on the streets to protest about issue X or issue Y. But no one as I said that I spoke to is looking to for example actually have a revolution. The idea of people who are looking to bring down a government violently. No one that I spoke to wants that. No one. They're generally speaking one. They won't change. They often went fan to the government at all but they actually would rather it was incremental. Right. I've got a question for Victoria. Anybody else or well along this pattern you'd better be getting ready Chris. You're going to have to be next. I have a question about authority in the Islamic states that you visited. So my understanding is that with the advent of the internet in these states like not just bloggers but people are finding new channels to bring their ethical questions about Islam and their religious questions which used to be you would go to your mom or you would go somewhere local but now people are just getting online and they're able to answer these questions or talk in forums and so on in an online manner. So what's happening is you're seeing an erosion of religious authority in these states because you know Islamic scholars now have a website and you can ask them questions and engineers have websites and so on so who's determining who the religious authority is and this relates to what you were talking about in your reading because of course religious authority and state authority are commingled to say the least in the Islamic states so I'm wondering if you could comment on just talking to bloggers and internet users in these states if they've mentioned anything like this or if there is a good impending crisis of authority or anything like this that's happening. One of the things that struck me across the Middle East in relation to Islam was that even in countries and individuals who are fundamentally opposed to what the regimes were doing they still with exceptions wanted an Islamic state I think we have a misconception in much of the West that if people for example are opposed I can denigrate in Iran they're looking to have sort of a secular state some Iranians I'm sure do in fact I know some who do I remember an example of being with some people quite prominent people there a famous cleric died when I was there was broadcast on TV and these guys were drinking to celebrate obviously privately as opposed to publicly clearly but despite that these are individuals who still said we can't imagine having a society in Iran say that was not based on the fundamentals of Islam now how that manifests itself I actually not sure I agree with you to the extent that Islam in most of these countries is still fundamentally strong actually where the authority comes from has been challenged to an extent but my sense is not that people are less believing say than they were before it's a bit different obviously how it manifests itself one of the things I found in Saudi Arabia for example was that a lot of people I spoke to was saying that their concern was that the only alternative narrative to what the government was putting out that was strong was often a fundamentalist narrative which is sort of al-Qaeda type narrative they weren't suggesting that everyone in Saudi Arabia shares an al-Qaeda mindset but there's no doubt that the so called reformers in Saudi Arabia felt they were fighting online against an alternative interpretation of Islam which was in some ways far more simplistic but far more convincing in the short term in other words US is bad let's try and end the US as opposed to a reforming more sort of post Islam kind of environment and I think one of the things that struck me in say Saudi Arabia was and again I wouldn't claim for a second that in Saudi Arabia so called dissidents have a lot of support because they don't if a Saudi Arabian regime fell the US would invade there within the week because the oil might go to terrorists there's no doubt that say dissidents don't have a great deal of support in their country but I think the idea of defining what Islam can be there is too much as I said in the west and this is one of the reactions to the last eight years during the Bush administration a rejection of political Islam is a fundamental floor of I would argue US foreign policy because if you ignore political Islamists across that region you're essentially ignoring a lot of people in that part of the world and they get pretty upset about that understandably they said to say we are moderate in our view you should talk to us and the Muslim brotherhood to me is a classic example of that the elements of that group which I don't like and a lot of people won't like but the fact is they represent lots of people and it's all the parts of the west engage with these kind of groups nothing will ever change so let's drill down on the brotherhood as a way to ask this question about what bloggers could be doing more effectively within this and stop me if I mischaracterize but you would probably characterise the situation in Egypt as there's a great deal of speech coming out of brotherhood blogs that reflects the will of the people probably more accurately than the current government does a great deal of enthusiasm for political Islam this is speech that tends to be constrained in a couple of different ways it's impossible to run as a Muslim brotherhood candidate right people run under independence but everyone understands that they're associated with the brotherhood at the same time the narrative in many ways that sort of come out of Egypt in western media is the narrative of the sort of very far to the left the kafaya movement the sort of ultra liberal based in the university movement what could and should brotherhood bloggers be doing and one thing can they learn from your work about how they could have a bigger influence both on their national politics and on sort of international politics that's a good question one of the things about a hood within their own organisation is there's a massive struggle at the moment between more sort of so-called hardliners and more so-called liberals so the more hardliners for example are feeling uncomfortable with the fact that younger bloggers are more brotherhood bloggers are seemingly comfortable having debates about the organisation itself online other words showing the inside working so to speak of a group they don't like that this is more the older the old guard there are for example a number of younger brotherhood bloggers and writers who write regularly for the guardian for example one of the guys I met he writes regularly for the daily star in egypt he writes in english he writes he's a moderate and someone who you think the west is mad not to try and the guy's 25 but you know he'd be mad not to try and engage someone like that or people like that in the group and he says and he's admittedly part of the elite of the brotherhood but he says that he knows that many people in the brotherhood if the west increasingly shuns the group as a whole it's easier for the extremists to take over the group because they sort of say your sort of middle way is not working you're trying to engage the west by writing in the guardian it's getting you nowhere etc etc basically so I think what brotherhood bloggers can do to me it's important not to sort of say to make them to appeal to a anodyne western audience but it's more and again it's not about changing their message to keep us happy about their message but I think it's important that people actually and more and more I think brotherhood bloggers are realising this that to actually try and bring about a greater chance of engagement actually means putting a western friendly to an extent face I'm not saying in a dishonest way but in a way and I think bloggers are doing that more and more the point is Ethan that a lot of western governments simply ignoring the group full stop so I think there are some people doing it they could do more and one of the things that's interesting is that a big debate about gender politics and brotherhood as well a lot of old guard Muslim brotherhood figures are not that comfortable with equal rights for women younger bloggers seemingly not all but some of them are more comfortable with that to me to actually be privy to those discussions in the west is an important thing and if we choose to ignore that we're essentially happy to simply define political Islam as al-Qaeda and the last eight years has generally been in much of the western media seen through that prism not all but too much so I'd like you to talk more if you can about one technology platforms and the interesting point you make about you know the technology having to become uninteresting in order for the social development to happen and also broadly about literacy and education around both world affairs and the technology that's enabling this in the west so I wanted to just share quickly two anecdotes that motivate that question well the first is just a criticism of myself although I'm like a member of you know fairly educated elite in this country I'm completely ashamed of my knowledge of world affairs and that you know it's something in spite of being very aware of it's not something that's easy to address whether and I think the problem goes beyond motivating study of the world through US foreign policy even if people were that level of literate they would know a lot more in the United States than they do now the other anecdote is something I recalled during the election in the US I I signed up for the Barack Obama website which had a internal blogging platform on it and I only posted two or three things on it most of which were fairly trivial but one was when he was traveling around the world and meeting with leaders in the Middle East I recalled that a classmate of mine who was a Palestinian was a fellow at a US think tank he had written an article in an Egyptian newspaper being very critical of the Obama administration and I wrote a briefing that was both a response to him and a directive towards the Obama administration linking to this article and I it's interesting because that's just a set of multiple platforms it was a traditional Egyptian newspaper it was someone given blogging time in a platform by a think tank and this thing that was funded by US taxpayers it was a novel forum designed by a US candidate and there's lots of different technology ecosystems that play there so I guess I'm interested in your reaction and where you think those all may be so there's a question about technological platforms also a question about literacy of technology in there there's also an intriguing concept of American foreign policy and international literacy which suggests a way forward to me which is if the US would just invade more countries we would learn a whole lot more foreign news so I'll be posting that on my Obama site in the very near future but I'll hand that over to you I'll share that view completely as well much cheaper gas much cheaper gas I think one of the things that strikes me is not American about the way in which a lot of Americans have viewed the Obama incoming Obama administration and how they hope he will view the world is this incredible naivety about how things are going to fundamentally change for the better I'm not suggesting they won't no one really knows I guess we'll wait and see we'll talk in a year or two but I would argue that thus far a lot of the people he's appointed in the kind of positions that he's taking in the Middle East for example are actually fundamentally not that different I would argue what Bush was doing a very brief example will suffice a lot of media was talking the last six months about how Obama's going to pull out of Iraq within 16 months well no one's talking about pulling out of Iraq actually if you read what he says what he says is he's going to pull combat troops out of Iraq within a couple within 16 months but American troops themselves will be in Iraq for years and years and years and years that's just one small example a lot of the Arab bloggers that I read about and write about have been saying this for quite a long time saying why is so much of the debate in America about this issue there's one issue particularly so fundamentally wrong and dishonest it's as if people want to believe who opposed the Iraq war that somehow Obama will pull out of Iraq entirely which he's not talking about doing at all in terms of technology platforms what's interesting I guess is and I didn't talk about this so much in my piece but the best example obviously tools like Facebook and Twitter and in many countries around the world increasingly governments are blocking these sites for obvious reasons there are alternative language versions which are being put out in some countries so a different version of Facebook or different version of Twitter or whatever if a lot of people say like this economist piece I quoted at the end talking about this is dying and it's dead it's a kind of article written probably by some you know think tank person who's never left his office I mean it's a kind of such a dry relevant piece the fact is most of the world doesn't see online technology in the same way and tools like YouTube I mean numerous examples I said before about posting videos of individuals who are torturing people not as a way to get off on it but as a way to try and publicize these horrendous acts the numerous examples I made a few months ago at the global voices conference we attended in Budapest lots of examples of dissidents in Morocco who had filmed policemen taking bribes for example this footage was then spread around dissident websites and I'm not quite sure what the long term effect of that was apart from probably embarrassing the government which was a good thing to do which is backed by the US again of course so I think it's really important that people are aware that these sort of sites are not particularly revolutionary in our countries but in a lot of our countries they are which is why many governments try and ban them and one thing I'd finish on is Google and YouTube particularly and a lot of this information I think Berkman has written about in the last 6-12 months is increasingly willing to write code into YouTube to allow governments to only block certain sites in certain countries so my understanding is for example Thailand a lot of YouTube initially has been blocked was blocked entirely then now it's available but the number of videos which supposedly defame the king who's regarded as a holy figure which is blocked but YouTube itself is available so I guess the thing is also how much do we know about the fact of companies like Google who are essentially willing for I would argue pretty cynical reasons to keep this technology open you disagree with that I think they are and I think there's a sense that the collusion as I said the collusion of these companies in trying to censor or censor certain elements of their tools I think it's something which we should talk about more I'm not saying right today but something that should be talked about more and doesn't get much press in the West again because YouTube is just celebrated as this wonderful tool which it is but many countries actually if it's blocked or you can't access certain webs certain videos it's a problem for my colleague because I'm going to jump in and actually pick up on this YouTube question before I hand the mic over to her so here's a very practical question Thailand is upset about videos defaming the king which are illegal under Thai law but also clearly fit within the realm of what we would consider a political expression via various different Article 19 international standards Thailand might respond to those videos by blocking all of YouTube right in fact that's the fairly common response that countries take to this nowadays should YouTube help Thailand figure out how to block just those extremely offensive by local law videos of footprints on the Thai king's face or should YouTube basically say it's take it or leave it Thailand you either take the open YouTube or you work it out yourself and you figure out how to do it is that collusion if our friends at Google talk to the Thai internet service providers and say don't block 5 million videos block these 5 it's a difficult question and I'm not going to claim I have an answer to it I should preface it by saying that but look I think my aim today is not to defame the entire Google organization just for the record but I do think that there is little public discussion about Google doing stuff like that now you're right is it better to ban 5 videos than ban the whole thing undoubtedly yes if that's the choice that is being given but as I said I think it's inappropriate for companies to do things like that without transparency at the moment you know writing about you know writing about this on a few blogs you know I don't understand why these sort of issues are not more discussed in the western media they should be which is a fault of journalist and God knows who else but yes if that's the choice Ethan you're right I'd rather a few sites being blocked rather than all of them of course I do but it concerns me that the kind of slippage that companies like Google are willing to make what happens next and more importantly we are too convinced I think in the west that only happens over there everywhere else but here the US, Australia whatever and we're seeing increasing that it's not going to happen it will happen in places like the west as well and that's something I think that again the tools technologies that are being learned over there are going to be brought back here and again if we don't know what goes on over there we shouldn't be surprised if it happens here too so you partly answered already from your last replies to my two questions what I wanted to ask is if you have a model of how information is spreading from the blogosphere to the wider population and the reason I'm asking this is because we've done lots of research here on how young people are using technology digital natives and I'm assuming that in the Arab world there is a huge digital natives population I think in a lot of countries the populations are mainly young so I'm wondering if you can tell us a bit about what young people are doing online and also research from the west shows that young people are mainly engaging with technological tools such as social networking sites SMS, Twitter and much less with blogging the research we did here in America show that many many young people don't even know what a blog is they don't see the point of it, they think it's boring they are probably reading some of the blogs of their friends but they are not actively replying and they don't know how it works so I'm just curious to know how you fit this evidence in the Middle East and if you can say a little bit about that I'm just curious one of the things that is fascinating about the Arab world particularly and obviously not that different in say China for that matter as well is that a lot of young people who maybe are dissatisfied with the current status quo have no choice but to go online actually create media, find media or actually read different media, state run media by definition is propaganda whether it's TV, print, online, radio, whatever so to actually find alternative information in the west for example if one reads a blogger based in Boston or Sydney I wouldn't necessarily trust what's being said I wouldn't trust a blogger in Tehran because he's in Tehran either but the difference is that in those two countries the only space for information which is likely to be independent alternative will be online so what you do find is in the west little in my experience not that many bloggers who are doing independent journalism you do find some of course you do not that many I found the Arab world in China for that matter particularly in China a lot of people I mean relatively speaking not that many in terms of 1.4 billion people but relatively speaking a lot of people in China who actually are doing independent reporting researching information finding out about corruption etc etc through blogging, through Twitter whatever it may be I don't think actually matters particularly what the tool is I mean in China often it is blogs but it also may be other tools as well I mean what someone's often said that because the censorship in China is so pervasive that often people are going back more to sort of old school ways which is more email and listservs rather than blogs because one can find out keywords and things can be blocked a lot more easily so one of the things I think I'm encouraged by at least even though it's quite small is that individuals in many countries that I've visited and I talk about in the book are actually doing original research not because they're germless particularly but because they feel compelled just to write about an issue which they think is not going to encourage anywhere else in Egypt for example a lot of bloggers that I spoke to I read regularly write about there's massive protests all the time about union rights and workers' rights in Egypt all the time you barely read about that in the West there was protests last few months like 70,000 people who were protesting against both against the government the fact that they can't get enough money not enough bread, not enough food etc etc that's a lot of people and I won't say they're all being organised through the web they're not but some of them are and they're often reports about those protests after the event which are discussed and hopefully help more people get empowered to protest etc etc and it seems to me that if we in the West want to support individuals or groups who are looking for a more kind of less dictatorial perspectives those are sort of groups that should be supported online or elsewhere so I think a lot of independent reporting is being done and I think when people often say in the West all bloggers are just republishing what everyone else says yes that's true often and in the long western world often it's not entirely untrue either but there's a lot more independent reporting despite virtue of the fact as I said often people feel compelled because of the alternative I was just wondering if you could speak to the culture of internet cafes in the countries that you visited you said earlier that satellite television has more of a sort of one-to-one relationship from satellite to home but that doesn't necessarily hold for the internet and it seems like people are accessing and blogging and contributing politically through internet cafes and that obviously comes with some amount of cost especially and I'm thinking of Burma for example where there are very strict laws controlling traffic and you have to take screenshots of traffic every 30 seconds or something like that and hold it for 30 days so that people can go through it and whether you think cyber cafes are so soon to be outdated when people are finally able to access computers in their own home or something to that effect the situation in Burma which I haven't been to I know is quite extreme when it comes to monitoring internet cafes and all the companies that I went to particularly China there is profound monitoring cameras all the time people being monitored it's being monitored my sense is from what I understand that many people in state China who are doing blogging or work which is particularly subversive are generally not doing it in internet cafes for obvious reasons although it's not that hard to find out who's doing it anyway because the system there is so sophisticated I don't necessarily believe internet cafes are going to die I mean it's hard to say but I think one thing is that still in a lot of these kind of countries people haven't got the money to buy their own computers I mean it's really a financial issue as well and keep in mind the fact that most people who are blogging or generally writing aren't doing political stuff anyway political blogging because that's on interest me but the fact is in most countries around the world people who are online don't care about politics it's not an issue it's irrelevant they're writing about like anywhere else they're writing about guys and girls and dating and films and music and just stuff stuff that we all watch and consume as well political blogging as I said is a tiny minority within a minority so I think internet cafes will survive just by virtue of the fact that in many countries in minority groups in many countries who are now being helped to get online by people with more resources particularly I remember there was an interesting example recently of people indigenous groups in Bolivia Bolivia has an indigenous president Eva Morales now it's a very poor country I think it's the poorest country in South America and a lot of people who are getting online there often are being assisted who are through internet cafes because there simply is no alternative and these guys aren't that fast especially if they're being monitored I don't think they are being monitored in Bolivia but they don't really care but yeah I think in the long run if people want to do things which are troublesome they're not going to be doing it under the glare of 24-hour cameras it might be worth pointing out just in passing that some of the most rigorous monitoring of internet cafes is taking place in Italy which now if you show up in an internet cafe you should expect to present your passport as it's an anti-terror measure question when people are starting to take a look almost geographically across the blogosphere and look how people are sorting themselves out in it. I'm thinking of John Kelly's work for example at Morningside Analytics and some of the others that are drawing maps for us of how people congregate in this space and it kind of picks up a little bit on Cass Sunstein's observation here in this country he's written extensively about people kind of finding birds of the same feather and not looking elsewhere and it strikes me that for social change to come about one needs to reach people who don't already agree with them in order to carry the conversation or the movement to people who are going to join with you in it who otherwise might not be inclined and yet at least what I'm seeing is finding that people are linking to blogs that are coming from the same perspective of the political perspective in a sense echoing it's creating a sort of a larger echo chamber and sort of the geography of it I think is questionable in terms of how much influence they can then bring so I just kind of want your thoughts on that aspect you would think in a table pulled with microphones we could do better than this perhaps not one of the things that certainly has come out in studies in the US and Australia for that matter is that what I'm going to do with the blogosphere as everyone will know probably here is that a lot of people are reading stuff that confirms their own views that's true I think you found during the US election obviously all the studies haven't come out yet because it was only two, three weeks ago but yes a lot of people are reading stuff that confirms their own views my understanding is in a lot of non-democratic countries people actually feel more compelled to reach people with views going or to join a movement to try and enforce change or bring change I note for example in Saudi Arabia is a good example of people that I spoke to there and other individuals who yes, a lot of people I spoke to were generally liberal of sorts opposed to the current regime opposed to any kind of fundamentalist system still believed in Islam being a central part of their country in the future but one of their aims was actually how do we reach out to individuals that are necessarily way, way out there because maybe they're lost, who knows people actually who can at least engage in a dialogue and a lot of things that's happening in Saudi Arabia despite the fact that there are censorship issues there although not massive amounts of censorship interestingly yet our individuals who actually are engaging about what political Islam could be in their own country again, this is generally not a mass movement, it's not and I wouldn't want to say that it is but I think from my understanding as a visitor there was less of speaking to the converter than there is allegedly in the West and Australia is the same problem and the blogosphere in Australia is not nearly as influential as it is here I mean it exists and it had an impact on the election last year but to the extent of having an effect here it's far greater I'm not suggesting the blogosphere had an effect on Obama winning my understanding is research suggests that social networking sites had more of an impact here, the way Obama's team used that rather than reading or other online tools that's my understanding from the research that's come out so far so for non-Western countries I think it's a bit different but again it's often difficult also to really gauge what's going on because true polling is virtually impossible to do that's so it's hard I mean there's been a lot of research recently by Berkman in fact about the Iranian blogosphere which was interesting and that was far more extensive than anything I think most of us had seen before but generally speaking again it's not a massively scientific, it's not a criticism of their work but it can't be scientific by the nature of getting real access to all the information thank you any other questions that people ought to get in or yes okay so there's a small number of people perhaps in the U.S. and the West who are constantly looking for sources of information other than the mainstream media and I'm wondering if you have any suggestions about how the blogging type journalism in these countries could be linked somehow to those people who are interested and whether in fact it would be helpful to make such linkers I think it would be very useful sorry my back is too I apologize for that it's useful for the reasons I guess that I tried to explain before not least that often the way in which so many of these countries are viewed in the West is very much through the prism of terrorism or other simplistic sort of paradigms how it can be done well I know for example in Egypt and other places there are increasing links between Western journalists who are their own bloggers now the problem of course then is that they only end up quoting the one or two bloggers every single time and they become part of the elite and then it sort of defeats the purpose of having a different voice that's true too I think one of the things also is and this is something that may be an uphill battle but I think it's worth doing is trying to and I think I'm having amongst others not just me having some success in trying to convince certain Western journalists and editors that doesn't just have to be a Westerner writing about an issue it can be someone who may be from that country or more involved in that country I mean look at for example the coverage in Iraq one doesn't read much about this because Western media don't like to reveal this but in fact virtually all the footage that you're seeing from Iraq none of it is shot by Westerners it's not only shot by Iraqis and they're taking the risk for all of us to sort of watch what's going on every single day in Iraq most of the photography, some what's been done by Westerners a lot of it's been done by Iraqis a lot of the Iraqi bloggers fear which admittedly has died down a bit in the last couple of years for different reasons is usually, not always, but often usually far more interesting than most of the Western journalists who are based in Baghdad who might get out for a day and then come back for some of these reasons because security is so bad I understand that but Dajah Mahal is a good example he's an American journalist who was an Alaskan mountain guide in 2003 ended up going to Iraq with no journalism experience whatsoever and in the last five years he now writes regularly he's based in America now again but he writes regular reports in conjunction with Iraqis who are based there in Baghdad, Basra, Mosul etc so in other words rather than just having a Western perspective there are many firms and probably US government protection there's actually Iraqi journalists who are given due credit for their work and actually being read and this stuff is published on IPS which is not exactly New York Times but it's still relatively well known and as the kind of media which to me should be more supported and more read because they're generally speaking far more insightful than what is far too often in the Western media and the New York Times etc etc I've lost in the holds out especially in New York Times I feel bad about that now if you're going to go after an open to the big guy right? but I think there is a need to read and support that kind of media not because it's propaganda but because it actually presents the perspective on the country which is utterly destroyed and Iraqi voices themselves I think maybe that's a good place to wrap and let's thank Anthony for being with us thank you thanks everyone for being here Amir are you around? do you know who's up next week? anyone happen to know?