On Sunday, May 17, David Hare performed in his play Berlin/Wall at the Public Theater in New York. It was a fitting day to think about the problem of the Wall as it came down in Berlin and is going up in Israel/Palestine.

For the play, Hare stands on the stage reading his thoughts on what makes Berlin so special and what is the significance of its past, and about the Wall going up in Israel/Palestine and how do the Israelis and Palestinians respond to the coming of their wall.

The subject of the play is in itself significant and deserves a serious discussion, as much as it is a treat to have Hare share his experience of having tried to understand the significance of each of these experiences and the comparison they present to our current world.

On Sunday, May 17, there had also been a small demonstration… weiter lesen

[Note: The following is a draft resolution Libya has submitted to the UN Security Council concerning the Israeli military strikes on UN facilities and people in Gaza during the Israeli attacks on Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had established an enquiry into the attacks on the UN facilities and operations. The report produced, however, has been kept secret with only a summary from the Secretary General being made available. The following draft resolution by Libya submitted to the Security Council is the first sign of any response by the Security Council to the results of the report. There has not yet been any public response from the Security Council on this draft resolution.]

11 May 2009

Draft Resolution

The Security Council,

Reaffirming all of its relevant resolutions, including resolutions 242 (1967), 338 (1973), 1397 (2002), 1515 (2003), 1850 (2008), and 1860 (2009),

Reaffirming… weiter lesen

The international categories for judging the safety of each country’s beef were changed in 2007. Under the new categories, and shortly after the US and Canada were reclassified from the old classification to the new category “Controlled Risk” for BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy or more commonly known as ‘mad cow disease’), US beef began arriving in South Korea.(1)

What is the significance of the role played by this change in status of US beef by the OIE in the beef deal?

But first some background.

In May 2008 Middle School students in South Korea held the first candlelight vigil protesting the actions of their new president, Lee Myung-bak who agreed to the removal of restrictions on the import of beef from the US. This was but one of a number of criticisms of the Korean government that netizens discussed and critiqued in their discussion forums on the Internet and then… weiter lesen

[Editor's Note: This is an edited version of a talk presented in Copenhagen as part of the 9th Annual Conference of the Association of Internet Researchers in October 2008. The talk was part of the panel "The Internet, Netizens and Journalism: Do Netizens Make Possible New Forms of Journalism"]

I – On the Emergence of the Netizen

The year 2008 was the 15th anniversary of the publication of the article “The Net and Netizens” by Michael Hauben on the Internet in the summer of 1993. Hauben posted this paper in several parts because it was longer than a traditional post. The posts were titled:

Common Sense: The Net and Netizens

The article was distributed around the world by the Usenet software and by people reposting it or emailing it to others.

The concept of netizen became embraced as a new form of identity, an identity that Hauben later referred… weiter lesen