Showing posts with label blogging. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blogging. Show all posts

Nov 13, 2020

to keep blogging

Just thought this morning that I need to come back to this platform and post something, which could be text or photographs. For the past few months I have been trying to keep journals about some of the events taking place around me. I haven't had the opportunity to chronical as much as I hoped and whatever I wrote so far has been tucked under my pillow. That sounds like hiding. I don't need to hide, I told myself this morning. So, I promised to do blogging regularly. This is a place where I can post non-academic stuff, just for myself and perhaps for others, if anyone would cross this path.

Mar 28, 2015

Jump Break Problem in Blogger

I am having difficulty creating a jump break in my blog post. It looks dull and boring to see a single post is a foot long, sometime even longer. As everyone tries to adapt to newer widgets and features, it necessitates me to spend a little on bringing some changes to the appearance. The current theme doesn't represent my optimal style, still, I think the simplicity of it matches my taste.

I have installed the current theme in 2009, and I can't exactly remember where I found it, and who has designed it. It's, as resembles, a basic Wordpress theme called "Pilcrow" (see the theme on wordpress website).

Is there anyone who could help with the xml codes? I attempted several times to change the codes, but wasn't successful. I would appreciate anyone who could assist me to solve this problem. To contact me, please use the contact form on the right column.

Mar 9, 2014

The Fantasized Dejection

Your day starts with rejection that sinks you deep in dejection. You are being half-hearted, and gradually start depriving your hope. A feeling of desperation, and defeat vapor in you, and fleetingly cloud your sight; despair is the word that you could name it.

But, no, that is not true. I should not feel that way. After all, tomorrow, when the sun rises, I will put on my new shoes, and rise again.

I will forget what befell me, it will not hurt me, and I must remember that this is the beginning of the first season. I blame the malignity of the time, but I have the temerity to challenge the fate, if, there is one. Oh, I must not forget that this is the first chapter; I should note that, in the end, the defeat is an experience toward victory.

Jan 1, 2014

Refusal to Silence

Months have passed by in muteness, I finally decided to return to blogging. This is not a resolution of the New Year, this is rather a promise to myself to update my blog regularly, and ultimately, this is an end to a period of stagnation. This post is a refusal to silence of almost a year; a period in which trifling matter entangled and restrained me from updating this blog.

Having spent four years studying in United States, I feel I've transformed significantly. Great people with their generosity and help made my dream possible which I'm indebted to them for the rest of my life. Henceforth, I’d like to verbalize my experience and my feelings here; the feelings that slip away unnoticed; the feelings that come from meeting incredible individuals, with great experiences and inspiring stories; the individuals who splendidly shared with me an array of knowledge and wisdom. I should acknowledge here that most of them have been the sources of growth and changes in me. I often think about them and I gratefully bow to them in my solitude.

Finally, there’s also one other thing happens today: The assumed date of my birth. With this note, I wish you all a blissful new year!

Jan 28, 2011

Blogging workshop photos in slide show

Here are some pictures in slide show that I've been taking for past years, roughly between 2003 and 2009. Most of those recent-uploaded pictures are from my workshops that I have been teaching blogging and online journalism for Afghan youth. The workshops have sporadically been taking place between 2006 and 2009. I thought it worth to put them in slide here on my blog as to showcase my works on digital Afghanistan. I'm still working on a project to develop blogging in Afghanistan, hopefully, soon, I will come out with some good news.

Anyhow, I'm inviting you to observe these picture from very a volatile and insecure zone like Helmand to quite secure places like Herat, Bamiyan, Kunduz and Kabul.

Apr 1, 2010

"Fearless Blogger"


When he was a child, Nasim Fekrat ’13 stood by a boulder at his parents’ farm in Afghanistan and watched other children heading off to school. His father, taking a break from tending to wheat, cows and sheep, walked over and asked, “Do you want to go to school with those children or do you want to be a shepherd? If you want to be a student, you might have a bright future, but you still have to work hard.” Read more...
There is an article written by Bill Sulon one my college's extra features' writers about humble me. I appreciate Bill who actually done a nice job. Briefly, I have talked to him about blogging and the impacts of blog on my life and its impacts on the society as a new tool for freedom of speech.

As internet is soaring in Afghanistan, the ministry of information and culture has recently announced that they are going to enact restrictions on web usage. This issue turned into a big concern now and it raising fears of censorship. Anyway, I will specifically write on this issue later but now you now can read my interview on my college website.

Sep 4, 2009

Meet Afghanistan's Biggest Blogger

BY ANNIE LOWREY
From: FP Logo


At this point, the litany of contemporary Afghanistan's problems is well known. The country has few paved roads, let alone computers; its population is poor and illiterate; it is blighted with poverty, disease, and violence. For the past 30 years, Kabul has been under the control of radicals, strongmen, foreigners, or some combination of the three. Only rarely can the foreign reporters who describe these conditions leave the safe bubble of Kabul or the back seat of an armored vehicle. As a result, Afghanistan's people, culture, and traditions remain woefully unknown to the world, or reduced to crude stereotypes.

"People outside of Afghanistan have no idea what really exists here," a deep-voiced 26-year-old blogger named Nasim Fekrat says. "I was searching for Helmand [on the Internet] the other day. The only things that came up were about terrorists and suicide and bombs. But there is another side to Helmand, another face. There is agriculture, art, museums, culture."

On his groundbreaking blog, Afghan Lord, Fekrat hopes to tell that to the world. Writing in Farsi as well as self-taught English, he has taken it upon himself to show Afghanistan's softer, more genuine face. Until recently, he feels, this face was nearly impossible to find.

"In 2004, a journalist friend of mine told me that he was using the Internet to search for an Afghan word. He kept on coming up with this picture of a dog -- an Afghan hound!" Fekrat says, laughing ruefully. "We didn't even know there was such a dog in Afghanistan."

Although he passionately hopes to bring Afghan art, culture, and music -- life, really -- to readers around the world with his blog, Fekrat certainly does not downplay the trauma of Afghanistan's recent history. Indeed, his life and his blog are very much a product of it.

Fekrat grew up in a religious family in a village in Ghazni province. His childhood, he recalls, was defined by hardship and alienation. In particular, the young Fekrat strained under the strictures of his father, who once raised his hands to the heavens and called on God to kill his son when he would not pray one evening. Fekrat was 11.

But Fekrat has always been strikingly intelligent, erudite, and resourceful. When he was a teenager, he fled to Kabul, then under the control of the Taliban. A local family took in the refugee and gave him shelter. Soon after, he found life there too onerous -- he gives no clear reason why -- and joined the peripatetic community of Afghan refugees moving from country to country. Along the way, he spent time in Pakistan, Iran, Pakistan again, and the United Arab Emirates.

While living abroad, Fekrat became a member of this literate and engaged, if disaffected, Afghan expatriate community. He discovered a profound love for poetry and classical music in spite of his lack of higher education -- he delightedly describes how he pulled together money to buy compact discs of sonatas, concertos, and religious music in the record stores of Islamabad.

Around this time, Fekrat also discovered the online Afghan diaspora. People applying for political asylum in the West, Fekrat says, started to find one another on the Web in Farsi and Pashto chat rooms starting around 1998. Fekrat was swept up by the virtual community.

"For me, the Internet became a portal not just for information" about Afghanistan and its people, but "literature, poetry, and music," Fekrat says. "And it did not just become a way to communicate. As much as I learned, I became more uninformed," he says, pausing to struggle with his English. "No -- that's not how you say it. When I'm online, I realize I'm not informed enough," he says, and chuckles.

In 2000, the year before the United States invaded Afghanistan, Fekrat contacted two people he found writing articles online in Farsi. They were both native Afghans applying for asylum and living abroad. In their online correspondence, Fekrat -- who had by then returned to his native country -- discovered blogging. It was a revelation. "I asked them how they were publishing online," he says. "And they said, 'No, no, it's a blog!' I went online and found the ready-made template. It was so easy. For me, it was amazing."

Soon after, Fekrat joined the nascent Afghan blogosphere. His first blog, founded in 2002, was an anonymous and sophomoric effort on poetry and music. Reading what he wrote, he felt dissatisfied with his work and changed his subject and pseudonym several times. Nevertheless, Fekrat delighted in expressing his own thoughts and feelings with a level of freedom virtually impossible to find in Taliban- or even U.S.-controlled Afghanistan.

Fekrat moved around between a few jobs in journalism, but it wasn't until 2004 that he decided to make blogging his vocation. Afghan Lord was born.

His first post reads, typos and all: "Who can believe that Afghanistan got its peace after an awful situation more than two ddecades war. The situation that human was killing human, brother killing brother, war lords were killing innocents people and lots of difficulties occurred in Afghan land. What was the reason? Who was responsible for all these? Who is guilty? Who was supporting them and armed them to kill each other for nothing? And what is going on now? To all these categories I will put my pen. I will try regularly post daily from Afghanistan."

It spoke to the trauma of the Taliban takeover, and the shock of the U.S. invasion. And it allowed Fekrat to begin speaking to the world.

Over the past five years, not only has his English improved in leaps and bounds, but Fekrat has found his voice as a writer -- aching with wonder at the beauty of his culture and the horrors of war. He posts mostly on breaking news events, interspersed with commentary on politics. But he also includes reflections on the joy of riding a motorbike, or a poem. As with so many blogs, it reads like an upload of the author's thoughts -- unadulterated, emotional, and sometimes contradictory.

Committed to life as a professional blogger, Fekrat became a more professional journalist as well -- and his profile quickly grew. In 2005, readers around the world voted for his blog for Reporters Without Borders' "Freedom of Expression" blog awards. His writing on occupied Kabul became internationally known; he bought partner URLs and expanded his Web presence. He started working for the BBC's Farsi edition and other journalistic outlets, including for international organizations such as NATO.

His career as a blogger has not come without danger, though. A few years ago, someone stole his pseudonym to post pro-Taliban comments. With his Internet persona and reputation compromised, he had no choice but to reveal his true identity. Since then, he has received numerous death threats in comments on his blog, and in text messages, phone calls, and e-mails. When I spoke with him in May, he was living on friends' couches, moving every few days to avoid men he believed to be following him.

Last year, a journalist he knew in northern Afghanistan was sentenced to death for allegedly making anti-religious comments on a Web site. But Fekrat thinks the security situation and the nascent community of those speaking truth to power is improving.

In 2006, Fekrat decided to take his blog community offline as well, and he created the Afghan Association of Blog Writers to aid the country's community of about 20,000. (An absurdly high number if one considers that there are only a few hundred-thousand computers in Afghanistan, most brought in by the United States or aid groups.)

As the head of the organization, Fekrat started meeting up regularly with other bloggers in Internet cafes. He decided to start teaching blogging as well, as those expatriate Afghan journalists had taught him. "I would ask people to donate just a few dollars," he says. "We would hire a generator so that we could run the computers at night. And then we'd turn on the Internet."

Now, he runs a blog school, teaching young Afghans about digital media, blogging, photography, and videography. It is his proudest achievement. "I show young, talented Afghans the Web. And now they have powerful tools to write about the situation, the society."

About a year ago, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul began funding Fekrat's blog school -- before then, he had sought donations on his Web site. The new-media guru now travels all over Afghanistan (usually on a motorbike) teaching remote communities about the power of the Internet and blogging. When I spoke with him last week, he had just finished stints in Helmand and Bamiyan.

This spring, he came to the United States for the first time, on the invitation of Joe Torsella, then the chief executive of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. Fekrat ended up staying in the United States to learn more about digital media and culture on a three-month fellowship at the DeWitt Wallace Center for Media and Democracy at Duke University. (He has a great video post of himself riding around the North Carolina campus on a pink bicycle.) And he may return to the United States to attend Dickinson College in Pennsylvania.

Now, Fekrat sees an opportunity for Afghanistan to leapfrog the United States into the age of digital media. "Afghanistan is not in an era to experience print media," he says. "In the United States, [newspapers] are in a state of crisis. In Afghanistan, we shouldn't repeat those mistakes. The world is going digital. I found the world online. And I want to put Afghanistan online. Why wait? Why spend the money to fund a newspaper?" His dream is to continue blogging and running his small-scale media shop -- and, eventually, to find funding for a "for-Afghans, by-Afghans" think tank.

Although he welcomes all the funding and support he can get, Fekrat doesn't just blog for the NGO crowd; he is most encouraged that his writing is finally catching on with literate Kabulis and rural Afghans alike. "It used to be, when you talked with someone and said you were a blogger, people thought you're not doing something responsible," he says. "Because of the religions and minorities, you are always offending someone." But now people are much more open to user-produced media, and much more open to blogs and political commentary.

This growing acceptance has a lot to do with what has been happening next door in Iran and the role online media played in the recent disputed election there. "Our neighbor, in Iran, it is a big country for writing blogs. And that has impacted here in Afghanistan, because Farsi is a language spoken here," Fekrat explains. "People have realized that there is an audience, and there is a way to [disperse] information. Everybody here knows about what happened in the Iran election, and they know how the Internet and blogs changed it."

Of course, Afghanistan is facing an election of its own, and the growing Afghan blogosphere will have a role to play, however small in a country where only one in 30 has Internet access. "Before, people always had to ask 'What is a blog?', and that is changing," Fekrat says.

In the meantime, Fekrat's mission remains showing Afghanistan to the world -- and spurring Afghanistan to put itself online. I asked him what he hopes to achieve with his journalism and community-building in the next year. "We are people and we need connection. For you, Annie, to understand me as a human being, as an Afghan, as a human being who has feelings, love, hatred, and culture, is listening to the same music as Annie listens to."

That is Fekrat's goal. And to achieve it, all that needs to happen is for readers to visit his blog.

Aug 1, 2009

Eager to Learn About the World, Tech Savvy Afghans Turn to Blogs

Note that this article was first published in the America.gov (direct link of this interview)and if you reproduce this article you must retain this notice.

Afghan blogger teaches others his craft
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By Jane Morse
Staff Writer

Washington — Tech-savvy Afghans increasingly are turning to blogs for information about their country and the world. They also use blogs as a platform for telling their stories about Afghanistan to the world, says Nasim Fekrat, one of Afghanistan’s trailblazing bloggers.

Although Internet penetration is not high in Afghanistan compared with other countries, since 2002, some 20,000 Afghans have started blogging, Fekrat told America.gov. Fekrat, who blogs under the moniker “Afghan Lord,” estimates that at least 1 million Afghans access the Internet through Internet cafes and at local schools and universities.

Fekrat discovered blogs in 2000, when only two Afghan expatriates — one in Canada and one in the United States — were blogging in Farsi. He e-mailed them requesting more information and then taught himself how to use the medium. In late 2002, he launched his first blogs featuring his poetry and discussions of classical music. Later, he included discussions about events in Afghanistan as well as philosophical issues.

In 2008, Fekrat taught blogging workshops in Kabul and Bamyan. Approximately 40 people attended the three-day workshops. They shared 10 computers Fekrat was able to rent with funds he raised from donors over the Internet. He hopes to raise enough money to repeat the classes again this year, sharing what he learned during his recently completed three-month fellowship at the DeWitt Wallace Center for Media and Democracy at Duke University in North Carolina.

Barack Obama’s deft use of Internet tools to send his message to voters, raise money and ultimately win the U.S. presidential elections profoundly impressed Fekrat. “This can be a model, a lesson to Afghanistan for presidential elections which are coming in a few months,” he said.

Afghanistan’s presidential elections are set for August 20. According to NATO officials, nearly 16 million voters have registered to vote — about half the country’s population.

That an African American won the U.S. presidential elections is “a big lesson” for Afghans,” Fekrat said. Afghans, he said, “should build up the determination to end inequality and hatred toward each other.”

“When I go back [to Afghanistan],” Fekrat said, “I will tell [my blogging students] about the media and morality. I’ll tell them how we can’t have exactly the same thing [as in the United States]; but with what we’re able to learn, to transform in [an] Afghan way; not in a very traditional way.

“We can change,” he said. “We can bring a picture of different models of Afghanistan.”

Many Afghans never learned about democracy, according to Fekrat. “Rather they heard communism, socialism, equality, Marxism, those ideas based on Marxist theory.” Compounding the problem, he said, is widespread illiteracy. “Those people, who never heard democracy, freedom, freedom of speech and human rights … they have to have an idea, a description of democracy that they never had,” he said.

“The meaning of democracy was not transformed in the context of Afghan meaning, Afghan knowledge, Afghan language,” he said. For many of the uneducated people, he said, democracy means little more than women discarding their head scarves.

AFGHANISTAN’S NEW GENERATION: GENERATING CHANGE

“The new generation is not the generation of Taliban,” Fekrat said. “The new generation — they are simply about learning. … They want to connect themselves to the world.”

Blogging and the Internet won’t reach Afghanistan’s illiterate poor, and Afghan society, Fekrat acknowledged, is highly controlled by tradition, religion, differing tribal customs and fear of retribution. Even so, there is a core population of young people interested in change, according to Fekrat.

Afghans who blog enjoy a lively forum for discussion, Fekrat said. “They’re talking about elections, presidential elections. Hundreds of articles are published in Web sites. There is debate among them. They’re discussing the issues,” he said.

“I’m sure there are lots of misunderstandings, misconceptions and biased information from Afghanistan,” Fekrat said. If given the proper tools, young Afghans could provide a more accurate picture of their country, Fekrat said.

Although Fekrat blogs in both English and Farsi, the vast majority of Afghans blog in Farsi. But Fekrat would like to see the viewpoints of the Afghan people reach a wider non-Farsi speaking audience. His plan is to teach Afghans to do video interviews and podcast interviews with subtitles in English. Once again, he’s hoping to raise the funds for the video camcorders by soliciting donations online.

“You can find lots of Nasims like me in Afghanistan; lots of people will contact you and talk to you. You can learn a lot from Afghan society,” Fekrat said.

For more, see Fekrat’s Web sites in Farsi and English.

Jul 11, 2009

Trip to Helmand

As we were about to land, suddenly the aircraft whirling round up and down in the sky, panic spreading through the passengers, an Indian who is sitting in front of me grabbed the backseat and looking on the right side.

A fighter jet was moving close to us. Brad who has called me in the plane that we are going together in media center told me this later when we were in the car towards PRT media center.

I never had this experience before, my mood was changing, almost nauseate. The aircraft bent to the right and start landing immediately.

After we got briefing and asked our blood types, we were asked to wear body armor and get into the car. The car drove in dust among several other cars that were divided to different directions.

I met Ben in PRT, who was my only contact. I had chance to check my e-mail and brows the news websites. Write you more here.

Dec 25, 2008

The Fight of Nasim Fekrat in Afghanistan

This post is written Philippe R. in Courrier International, you can read this in original version in French language. My friend Jean-Baptiste Perrin translated into English.
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With his personal blog Afghan Lord, Nasim Fekrat, 25, is a real fighter. His country Afghanistan has been on the front page of Western and foreign media for so many years, at the heart of what is called "the fight against international terrorism." In Kabul, Nasim fights too. With his own weapons and for a cause much braver and more difficult: freedom of expression.

Nasim Fekrat is an Afghan journalist, internationally recognized for his blog Afghan Lord that exists in English and Farsi. In 2005 already, Reporters Without Borders has awarded him its first prize to reward his work, his courage, his commitment. Afghan Lord is currently competing for the best South Asia blog 2008 awarded by the Brass Crescent Awards, oriented towards the Muslim world's blogosphere. Most recently, Nasim Fekrat won the 2008 Information Safety Freedom (ISF), received in Siena in Italy.

Nasim Fekrat has more than deserved his "trophies" of defender of the freedom of expression. This very freedom, he conquered it thanks to the Internet. He is an Afghan proselyte for blogging: he created the Afghan Press online journal and founded the Association of Afghan bloggers. Both in two versions, English and Farsi.

In its latest post dated December 14, Nasim Fekrat explains better than anyone why he won the 2008 ISF prize, as a militant for an Afghanistan open to the outside world.

"Digital Afghanistan was in my plan to foster an interest in digital media among young people in the Universities, schools, institutes and journalists. Digital Afghanistan was very important for me because I believe this is the only way we can tell our story to the world. Presenting Afghanistan through digital world is a job for new generation, not for those were involved in war, for those who were involved in massacres, those who plant opium but this the new generation that can tell to the world the reality what they believe and streaming in their live daily. They are the sources of truth and honest, they are tired of war, they are not the generation of suicide anymore."

Nasim Fekrat was awarded the ISF prize jointly with Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh, an Afghan boy whose death sentence was commuted to 20 years in prison. His crime? Having read an article on the Internet.

Nov 1, 2008

Blogging for Afghanistan

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From The Guardianweekly

Despite decades of civil war, marauding Taliban and deadly military air strikes, Afghans have experienced some changes for the better over recent years. Health facilities, schools and roads have improved, and a fledgling media industry is finding its feet. Bloggers are off to a fast start, with Nasim Fekrat, also known as Afghan Lord, leading the way. This 25-year-old ethnic Hazara knows all too well the dangers of self-expression, but believes freedom of speech is vital if Afghanistan is to leave its bloody past behind.

Friday October 17th 2008

Lead article photo

Signs of change are visible across Afghanistan. Photograph: John Moore/Getty Images

When I was 11 years old my father pushed me to pray and I would not pray. One night my father raised his hands to the sky and said: "Please god, take Nasim. Kill him, take him back – I don't want him." He did this in front of me and my siblings and nobody said anything. That evening I couldn't sleep. I was thinking death would come right at that moment. I was so scared, thinking god would come to take me soon, that I kept moving my hands and legs to make sure I wasn't dead.

My mother was kind to me. After my father kicked me out of our house she gave me blankets and told me: "I can't help you, your father is very stubborn, but go to the roof and sleep there." Eventually I left and went to Kabul where a local family took me in. All I did after that was read books.

When I created my first blog I used a pseudonym – I wanted to escape my identity and to be neutral. I told people I was born in Afghanistan but that was it. I didn't want to be seen as one type of person or another. Now in my writing it's no secret: people know I'm Hazara.

In Afghanistan, when you write your opinion in the public sphere, you are labelled a racist. I've been receiving a lot of threats. Someone by the name of Coffin posted on my blog, saying "Soon I will find you", and I also received an email that said "Your days are numbered". People approach me from aid organisations that don't exist. But I've been dealing with this since 2004 when the police shut down the satirical magazine I had started, so these sorts of things are very normal for me now.

Our life, or our society, is completely different from in the west. I told my friends that as long as you have bread to eat here in Afghanistan, don't go to Europe; in Europe we are not treated as human beings. Our looks are different, our ways different. It takes a long time to match with them, to understand. When I went to Hamburg I asked two German people for directions and they completely ignored me; they turned and walked away. So I tell my friends, if you want to go to Europe, fine, just visit for a little while and come back.

Newspaper media is very new in our society. There were just one or two newspapers up until the Soviet era, which were only propaganda for political parties. At that time freedom of speech had little meaning. Now, with people coming back from Iran and other countries, Afghans are more educated, they are more interested in news and in reading. We now have more than 20 daily papers and 100 weeklies.

I don't read Afghan newspapers; most of them are not independent. They are biased towards a specific political party or organisation, or whichever donor is giving them money. We don't have a situation here in which very few people earn enough money to publish a newspaper.

All that I write is with a view to making an Afghan thinktank. I want to bring independent thinkers together who can talk about Afghanistan in a different way. I don't want a repeat of our history of massacres and tragedy. This has become my mission.

One thing I still don't know is how to deal with the past. Afghan history is full of genocide and bloodletting – and we still have warlords wielding power. So writing about the past, dealing with it, is kind of taboo in this society. It doesn't matter who you are – if you are Pashtun, Uzbek, Hazara, Tajik – whatever you write, somebody will attack you. People think we should just forget the past.

Nowadays when I see my father I kiss his hands, but he is not happy with me. He regrets what he asked god for, to take me. I can read that in his eyes. But I forgive him. Because at that moment I decided I wanted to be a man for myself, not for my father. It made me very strong and able to take care of myself. In my life, whatever I wished for, I reached out and grabbed it.

• Nasim Fekrat was speaking to David Lepeska.

Jul 23, 2008

When bloggers talk to bloggers

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I wrote this here already

It seems that bloggers always looking for bloggers. It happened for me when I heard about Stefen Niggermeier, a famous media journalist and blogger. I was very interested to meet a successful German blogger. His blog is called BILDblog, it observes and takes the role of a watchdog in regard to the largest newspaper in Germany, the tabloid “BILD”, as it regularly points to errors in the paper. His blog received several prizes.

Having dinner and chatting with him and asking him about why he became a blogger was an interesting moment. Stefan believes the best way to practice free speech and to write is blog. “In your blog you don’t have to be worried about the text length, you don’t have to consider the editorial advice and those principals which are asked normally from the editor of the newspaper”, he said.

Mr. Niggermeier also shared his experience in blogging: “Blogging is easy, just start, if you have word, just put it together and work in a specific way, you will be a famous blogger”.
In this way he became a blogger, as he said, playing with buttons for bloggers, but finally he had a blog and today he is one of the most famous bloggers in Germany.

Jul 1, 2008

The Second Round Blogging of Workshop in Bamyian

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Already published here

Under the auspices of Association of Afghan Blog Writers, the second round on blogging workshop was held for tens of Afghan journalists and writers in ancient city of Bamian. This workshop was underway from June, 12 to June, 15. First workshop of this series was previously held by the Association of Afghan Blog Writers in Kabul for journalists, university faculties, students and teachers.

Two western and three Afghan teachers participated in the latest round of blogging workshops. Mr. Martin (German journalist) who was supposed to teach in the first day of workshop, unfortunately failed to do so due to an illness. In the second day, first hours were dedicated to theoretical issues, in which Mr. Jeffrey Estern (young American journalist) approached weblog phenomenon from a western and modern-world perspective. Mr. Jeffrey compared visual and print media with blogging and evaluated the influence of blogging on public opinions, politics and other media, and said: “In our country, i.e. United States, along with three constitutional powers, Media is the fourth power which monitors activities of government. However, there was no body to supervise the media. After years and with the introduction of technology and internet, Weblog came into existence. Today, weblogs supervise the media, so that there have been several cases in which bloggers revealed misinformation of some prominent journalists who were consequently fired from their positions.”

After some theoretical discussions, the rest of the second day was dedicated to practical issues. According to directors, main goal of such workshops is to turn this new phenomenon into a public one so as to ensure that everybody practices the right of free speech with no censorship. Since increasing pressures of Information and Culture Ministry has led to more censorship by e-media and private TV channels, weblog may be a better choice to experience free speech as well as institutionalizing this principle in the Afghan society.

This was the second blogging workshop held in Afghanistan, and Association of Afghan Blog Writers is supposed to run similar workshops in other cities such as Herat, Mazar- Sharif, Jalalabad, Kandehar, Bamyian and Daikundi.

Blogging is an absolutely new phenomenon in Afghanistan and most of the people do not take it professionally. Therefore, such workshops directed by Association of Afghan Blog Writers may speed up the process of professionalization and facilitate it for Afghan bloggers. Today most of the youth and students have turned to this phenomenon. Though having access to internet is very problematic, the Afghan youth increasingly turn to weblog and blogging, and the number of Afghan weblogs is increasing. Up to now, more than 20,000 Afghan weblogs have been registered by Afghan people in various countries and through various blog service providers, such as Blogger, wordpress, Blogfa, Persianblog.

Barriers to the Way of Afghan Bloggers

Afghan bloggers have to deal with a wide range of problems. Due to recent controversies over Dari (Farsi) and after two correspondents in Mazar-e Sharif were sacked just for using Dari equivalents of ‘University’ and ‘Student’, Afghan Telecom has blocked two popular Persian blogger sites: Persianblog and Blogfa. Some believe that such acts are the continuation of fight of Abdul Karim Khoram(minister of Information and Culture) against Dari Persian.

On the other hand, there is the problem of power shortage. In spite of Hamid Karzai ruling for several years and presence of International Community in Afghanistan, Kabul inhabitants still do not have access to power. Power is available only 6 hours per day, and suffers fluctuations. This problem may be a big barrier to the way of Afghan bloggers and prevent them from updating their blogs.

Help Promote Free Speech

Directors of the project believe that turning this new phenomenon (i.e. Weblog) into a public issue between Afghan youth and writers can help the free speech and institutionalize democracy in Afghanistan. Today many emerging journals claim ‘independence and being free’, but they are unfortunately so associated with political trends and parties that practically come to experience self-censorship. Very often it happens that they fail to publish critical papers. On the other hand, Afghan journals and media have taken an opposition stance and the only thing they may criticize is the government, while there is a myriad of hot and sensitive issues happening all around Afghanistan neglected by such journals and media. Weblog enables the writer to publish his thoughts and criticisms freely and independently, using either real name or nom de plume.

Jun 9, 2008

Upcoming Blogging Workshop in Bamian

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I am preparing to go to Bamian to launch the second round of the Blogging Workshop. I had a little money left from the previous and first ever workshop in Kabul, which will serve for materials, renting computer lab, internet, transportation and stationary.
I hope this won’t be the last workshop on Blogging, because of financial problems. I appreciate the friends and people who helped us for the last workshop. I hope our friends and people who are really concerned about Afghanistan and digital media, and especially in the blogging spheres will help us.

We are going to bring together young people, journalists, students and people who are interested to blogging, in order to bring changes, in order to give news out of Afghanistan, in order to fight for freedom of speech.
I kindly ask people abroad to donate to us, and help us to fulfill our goals towards freedom of speech. I am sure, the small donations will be used for us to rent internet and a computer lab for teaching Blogging to journalists, students and for new generations who will bring changes for Afghanistan.

The second round of the Blogging workshop will be Thursday, June 12th and will continue for three days. In the last few months I regularly received phone calls from journalists, students, university teachers and people in Bamian who work for NGOs, they were asking me to go there to teach in the Blogging workshop.

I have already announced on behalf of Association of Afghan BlogWriters that those whom are interested to attend the blogging workshop, should start applying for the course. In one day we received 49 applications which were a lot more for us but we accept only 25 of them. So we had to close registration already.

For our Blogging workshop we rented a computer lab with 15 computer connected to internet, therefore we should ask for students to share their computer, otherwise we are out of capacity.
I hope this workshop will run well so we can come closer to fulfill our goal to promote blogging in Afghanistan in order to help digital media and support freedom of speech.

Just this morning I heard that Abdul Samad Rohani, a young journalist who was working for BBC for the last year, was found dead in Helmand. As an independent journalist and blogger I share my feelings and support his family and friends. This is shocking news for Afghan media and freedom of expression, especially for those journalists who work independently.

Apr 9, 2008

For The First Time: Blogging Workshop in Kabul

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For the first time in Afghanistan, a two days Blogging workshop was organized by the Afghan Association of Blog Writers. The participants were an Afghan journalist, a University teacher, a poet and writers from different provinces and of various ethnic backgrounds.

The main goals of this workshop are better access of journalists to weblogs and other digital media. Since Afghan print and internet media are of a very low quality, blogs could help the Afghan print media and become a milestone in the media situation in Afghanistan.

This was just the first blogging workshop in Afghanistan. The plan is to continue with more workshops in different parts of Afghanistan, including Herat, Mazar-e- Sharif, Jalalabad, Kandahar, Bamyan and Daikundi.

Cultural activities in cyberspace, theories of blogging, detailed similarities and differences between web sites and weblogs, and the techniques of making a blog were discussed in these two workshop days. And at the end, each of the participants independently opened their new weblog in cyberspace.

The world's famous weblogs, the best Persian blogs and the world most popular blogs were introduced to the group and the factors that make a weblog better were among the issues that were explained to the participants.
The participants were technically taught how to open a blog, managing, browsing, linking, ways of writing and the skill of making a framework for the blog.

The Persian blog providers such as 'PersainBlog' and 'Blogfa' were introduced. Afghans yet were familiar with 'PersianBlog' and 'Blogfa' as service providers, now this workshop helped them to learn about other powerful service providers like 'Blogger' and 'Word press'. All of the participants then built their blogs on Blogger.

Blogging is a new phenomenon in Afghanistan, and only a few people make professional use of it. Therefore holding such workshops for the first time by the Afghan Association of Blog Writers can speed up this process and facilitate the work of Afghan bloggers.

Blogging is new in Afghanistan and today most of students and youth start to use it. Even though there are many obstacles for accessing the internet, the Afghan youth refer more and more to this than before, and the number of Afghan bloggers dramatically grows by the day.
Around twenty thousand Afghan blogs have yet been created in cyberspace by Afghans inside and outside the country, and using different service providers.

Afghan bloggers have already faced many challenges and difficulties. The two Persian service providers 'Persianblog' and 'Blogfa' have recently been filtered by 'Afghan Telecom', the private Afghan Telecommunication Company.

Some people believe that this work of Afghan Telecom occurs in following the anti–Farsi/Dari efforts and thus deleting the Farsi/Dari words from the city billboards by Abdul Karim Khuram, Information and the Minister of Culture.
They claim that this is a bare break of the subscribers' rights and should seriously be condemned.

The electricity and internet are complementary of each other. But unfortunately, after seven years of the Karzai newly born administration and the presence of the International community, Kabul citizens still don’t have access to electricity. Internet was supposed to become nationally accessible, but it doesn’t. There are many Net-Cafés in Kabul, but because they are so expensive, a large number of the interested youth can not use them.

More about Blogging Workshop:

1) Afghanistan: First blogging workshop in Kabul

2) Blogging workshop in picture

3) Promoting Blogging in Afghanistan B.B.C

4) For the first time Blogging in Afghanistan- Radio Zamaneh

5) An Initiative which is going to change Aghanistan+Pictures

6) How Blogging Workshop was held?

7) They’re blogging in Kabul!- CIPE Development Blog

8) Tactic: Organizing a blogging workshop - DigitActive.org

Related News about Blogging Workshop in Italian Blogs


1) Soldi spesi bene - Meri

2) Nasim e i bloggers di Kabul - Pino Scaccia's blog

3) Nasim Fekrat, un workshop sul blogging a Kabul - Pipistro

4) BlogFriends

5) BarBlog

6) PIU'BLOG

7) Tre Puntini

8) Zomberos

9) IL MURO

10)
Per la prima volta un blogging workshop a Kabul, Afghanistan- WIKIO

First blogging workshop in Kabul

From Global Voice Online
ByHamid Tehrani

The Afghan Association of Blog Writers (Afghan Penlog) overcame financial difficulty and obstacles like electricity shortages to organize the first blogging workshop in their history. The workshop was held in Kabul on April 3-4, in association with Nasim Fekrat and Masoumeh Ebrahimi [Fa], two active Afghan bloggers.

Afghan blogging workshop
Twelve journalists, teachers and writers learned how to start a text blog, a video blog, a photo blog, and useful tips, like how to use RSS feeds.



At the end of the workshop, several blogs were created in Dari, Pashtou and English.

Fekrat said, “I am receiving lots of inquiries from Kabul University students and journalists who want to learn blogging, but financial problems remain a main obstacle.” Fekrat is already thinking of organizing a second workshop because there is more to share and teach.

Nasim Fekrat at the Afghan blogging workshop
Nasim Fekrat helps lead the workshop.

Nasim Fekrat says [Fa]:

This experience has been very useful. I learned a lot. Most of the people who participated in this workshop were journalists, academics, writers and others who can help revitalize our culture and intellect in Afghanistan's bored society. Organizing such a workshop has been one of my goals for a long time. Finally, thanks to Geomap and Masoumeh Ebrahimi it became a reality.

Afghan blogging workshop
More photos can be found on Civil Movement of Afghanistan along with a report.

Manzarra who learned to blog in this workshop writes about using the internet to advance free speech and freedom of the press .

Mokhtar Pedram, a journalist, shares [Fa] his experience with us:

I was scared to come to the world of internet and blogging… Maybe it was a technical barrier. But this one and half day workshop changed my perception… It wouldn't be true to say that all my problems with the internet were solved in these two days, but I did decide to start my blog, which proves just how effective this workshop has been.

Safeh says [Fa] blogging is a new thing in Afghanistan and that academics and teachers have only just discovered it.

Zartosht writes [Fa] that such workshops may be the most important step for journalism in Afghanistan.