Global Voices Online

Michael Turton looks at how the KMT government is attempting to control content at the public media institutions (PTS, RTI and CNA). He follows up with details of the response from the International Federation of Journalists. Claudia Jean gives examples of more broader attacks by the KMT on freedom of speech.

Cuban diaspora blogger Uncommon Sense reports that a Cuban human rights activist who was paroled from prison earlier this year because of poor health, now faces up to five years in prison “on a charge of ‘attacking' — which has been used before to silence critics of the dictatorship.”

Generation Y offers encouragement to a rural blogger (whom she refers to as “peasant of agile keys and posts as sharp as machetes”), who paints a picture of what blogging in Cuba is like: “Time is scarce and expensive. You have to resend posts and emails that are interrupted when the line goes down. You can’t read or respond to comments. There is little chance of establishing relationships with other bloggers…”

Syrian-Saudi relations have reached an all low point, where even a Saudi newspaper has been banned. Sami Moubayed explains on Syria Comment.

Tony Bey, from Lebanon, reports that two missing American journalists have been found - detained in Syria.

ESWN translates a Guangzhou Daily report which explains how a reporter blog post about Lifan Landslide incident has managed to turn from a “natural disaster” into a “major incident with accountability”.

Vexed Bermoothes suspects that the reason Bermuda was involved in last year's World Tourism Summit “was that the event was just a ploy to make sure the Premier was distant and unavailable as the Privy Council met to debate Government’s failed gag order on the ‘Son of the Soil' papers.”

The Hong Kong government suggests to filter the internet in order to “protect” youth from indecent and obscene article. The issue then comes to “Who decides what we can see on the Internet?” - ESWN has translated a local newspapers article on this.

Fernando from Pepitas.com posts the notice he received letting him know that strangers tried to crack his blog, targetting specifically 3 posts with complaints about two ministers. Luckily the attack was detected and although all the comments were erased by the crackers, the were able to recover most of them.