ConvergeSouth05 - International Coverage

I understand that this year's ConvergeSouth will be different in theme and format from last year's, but that does not mean it is not going to be full of interesting people and conversations...

Here's a little bit more about ConvergeSouth, session by session:

Friday morning:

Michael Moran started off the Friday morning with a session on the effect bloggers have around the world, particularly in countries where freedom of speech and freedom of press do not exist even on paper. The prime example, of course, was Hoder, a blogger who started the Iranian blogging revolution, keeping the Iranian government's feet to the fire and at the same time keeping the Iranian (and global) population informed without filtering by the government and professional press. The government in Tehran understands Hoder's power and what a PR catastrophe it would be to lay a finger on him, so he freely travels between Toronto and Tehran. Yet, ironically, Hoder was kept by the US immigration service for a couple of days in Buffalo NY, so he never made it to Greensboro. What a national shame. We should really raise some big stink about it. The international hero of freedom, democracy and human rights held captive as suspicious by our racist government. City on the Hill, yeah, right!
Michael has showed us Global Voices Online, an excellent aggregator of international blogs. Interestingly, he was using Yugoslavia as an example of a situation in which international journalists got their informaiton from local bloggers instead of filtered governmental press. Yet, Global Voices Online (web-place I am familiar with from before) does not aggregate a single blogger from Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia or Macedonia. Being from that part of the world, I could not contain myself and had to blurt out this observation. Why is this the case? Perhaps all the poli-bloggers from the area are now abroad? Everyone there is sick and tired of political coverage and has moved to blogging about movies and music? The new generations do not care about politics? All of the above?

There are a bunch of Balkan bloggers. One can look at a sampling here, here and here. I have recently discovered several dozen Balkan blogs on MSNSpaces - mostly young people and some of them talk politics (among else). It's time to re-start the Carnival of the Balkans, I guess.

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