At a speech in front of the United States Agency for International Development, President Bush reflects on the victims of tyrannical governments he has met, among them: Blanca González, whose son Normando Hernández González is a political prisoner in Cuba, and Olga Kuzulina, whose father Alexander Kozulin is imprisoned in Belarus for running for president. (1:50)
President George W. Bush speaks at the groundbreaking of the United States Institute of Peace headquarters today. Bush stated that freedom is universal and the birthrights of every man woman and child and the USIP is working to create freedom throughout the world. (0:34)
The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom discusses their evaluation of North Korea at a press conference at the National Press Club on Friday May 2nd, 2008. (0:44)
The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom announced their 2008 recommendations to Secretary of State Rice on CPC’s, or countries of particular concern. Their 2008 annual report was also released to the President, Secretary of State, and Congress on U.S. policy. The countries that the commission designated as CPC’s include Burma, North Korea, China, Sudan, and Turkmenistan among others. (more…)
Ellen Ratner describes the freeing of slaves on the border of Darfur. Some slaves are simply killed rather than sold, and even those that are freed often do not understand their freedom, not having known any other life. (1:52)
Justice Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court, testifying before a House Appropriations Committee hearing on the Supreme Court’s budget request, says that we are in danger of having a generation of young people ignorant of our country’s principles and history, and “you cannot preserve what you don’t understand; you cannot defend what you do not know.” (0:36)
At the House Foreign Affairs Committee International Relations Budget Full Committee hearing on the “International Relations Budget for FY2009,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says that if
Speaking were:
Arash Sigarchi, an Iranian blogger who had been sentenced to 14 years in prison for espionage and insulting the country’s leaders, speaking through an interpretter
Mohammed Ali, an Iraqi blogger (http://iraqthemodel.blogspot.com/)
Tony Badran, a Lebanese blogger (http://beirut2bayside.blogspot.com/)
Arash in his opening statement described how he was forced into blogging by the pervasive censorship of the media in Iran. Publishing anything critical of the government results in beatings, fines, and jail. When Arash began blogging, the government was largely unaware of the Internet, so he was free to publish whatever he wanted. In recent years, though, it has begun monitoring the Internet. Arash said that western funds to promote democracy in Iraq allows the government to brand bloggers and others as mouthpieces of the US, so a better form of aid would be to help people get Internet access. Responding to a question from Paul Wolfowitz about the reach of Voice of America and other media, Arash also said that access to western media is more limited than access to drugs. He also noted that Ahmadinejad is still quite popular, and the general people don’t know about economic sanctions against Iran.
Ali, an Iraqi blogger, said that he had spoken with other bloggers, in both Iraq and Sudan, who had been inspired by him to begin blogging. Arab media outlets are heavily government funded, but blogging allows independent people to express themselves cheaply. Blogging can be difficult, though, because Internet access is scarce.
Tony Badran said that in Lebanon, where Internet access and access to western media are much more common, blogging presents other difficulties. Blogs are being used for propaganda and conspiracy theories by Syria, and it can be difficult to distinguish genuine citizen blogs from Syrian “info ops.”
