Saturday, March 08, 2008

Circumventing censorship

As Armenia descends into a totalitarian regime, dissemination of information becomes of paramount importance. Here are a few sites that regularly provide relevant information.

Payqar - http://www.payqar.net or http://www.payqar.org

InfoArmenia.org - http://www.infoarmenia.org

Azat Hayastan - http://azathayastan.googlepages.com

Marti Mek - http://martimek.livejournal.com/

Bekaisa - http://bekaisa.livejournal.com/

Unzipped - http://unzipped.blogspot.com/

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

By relevant information I suppose you mean pro-opposition information... ;-)

Still, I have to hand it to you guys. You set a precedent on the Internet for Armenian blogs and certainly won the information war even in the conditions of a state of emergency.

Bravo for that, even if I disagree with some of the politics. I think it was an important precedent. Actually, you did all of that even before election day, but took it to new levels since.

Well, I suppose the information war in the English-language area of the Internet, but even so. Incidentally, as you probably know, payqar.net and payqar.org are blocked. The other sites work here, though.

Anonymous said...

Onnik, your blog is blocked??

Ankakh_Hayastan said...

Onnik,

relevant is non-government controlled news.

Don't be surprised at the craftiness of methods to spread news. When you love liberty, you find ways to circumvent totalitarian tactics.

I don't know about winning the information war. It's still going to take a long time. The victory will be when there is no censorship (direct or indirect) and all the media in Armenia is free to publish or broadcast what they want without fear of being shut down.

--At least that's my dream--

Anonymous said...

http://www.youtube.com/user/aramenia

Haik, please post this video in your blog.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous, my blog is fine. Indeed, so far there has been no censorship or blocks on blogs which is kind of interesting. It's just some media sites, opposition non-blogs, and YouTube.

In fact, I'm surprised that even the most critical and pro-LTP blogs being written from inside Armenia as well as outside have not (yet?) been blocked.

Nazarian, a pro-government source close to this kind of thing told me yesterday that they realize they are losing the information war on the Internet. However, there may be an interesting development in this regard as a result.

If it happens an announcement will be made early this week.

Talking of Internet censorship, however, here's something that should interest you.

Wednesday 12 March : launch of Online Free Expression Day plus repeat of last year’s "24-hour online demo"

[...]

To denounce government censorship of the Internet and to demand more online freedom, Reporters Without Borders is calling on Internet users to come and protest in online versions of the nine countries that are “Internet enemies” during the 24 hours from 11 a.m. on 12 March to 11 a.m. on 13 March (Paris time). Anyone with Internet access will be able to create an avatar, choose a message for their banner and take part in one of the nine cyber-demos (Burma, China, North Korea, Cyba, Egypt, Erithrea, Tunisia, Turkmenistan and Viêt-nam).

Reporters Without Borders will release its latest list of “Internet enemies” together with a new version of its Handbook for Cyber-Dissidents.

When the first “24 hours against Internet censorship” was held last year, some 40,000 Internet users came and clicked on an inter-active map of the world to help make the “Internet black holes” disappear. This time we can do even more to make this new protest a success and to put pressure on the governments that try to muzzle what should be space where people can express their views freely.

[...]


http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=26017

Ankakh_Hayastan said...

Onnik, the state has resources (human and otherwise) that are far larger than what the virtual world has. My hope is that we can chip away from every side and make them spread thin. So far I'm happy that with the minuscule resources and an ever present threat of imprisonment we have managed to do what we have done so far. It's good that they think they are losing the information war. Short of total blockade and imprisoning half the population, they can't win.

We have one thing on our side - we are the good guys in this.

Anonymous said...

Brilliant site, I had not come across hnazarian.blogspot.com earlier in my searches!
Continue the great work!

Anonymous said...

Thanks for sharing this link, but unfortunately it seems to be offline... Does anybody have a mirror or another source? Please reply to my post if you do!

I would appreciate if a staff member here at hnazarian.blogspot.com could post it.

Thanks,
Alex

Anonymous said...

Hello,

I have a inquiry for the webmaster/admin here at hnazarian.blogspot.com.

May I use some of the information from your post above if I give a backlink back to your website?

Thanks,
Jack