Fieldnotes on Humanity

It is a bit funny to see myself in this clip. It just made me to laugh, I can't believe what I was telling to Mario Forenza, the Interviewer. By the way, i am trying to do video podcasting but I still challenge with myself how to overcome on my shyness. By the way, you can also download the movie from here .

------- 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 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 sle...

------- Here is an interview with me in Liberazione newspaper for the communist party in Italy . The interview is translated from English to Italian Language, you can find in this link. Also you can read it in Mauro Biani's blog, he is an Italian famous cartoonist. You can also find information about this newspaper here which is translated by google I appreciate Mauro who worked on this interview to be published in Liberazione.

-------- By Jeffrey Stern Minutes into Afghan President Hamid Karzai's speech before the Afghanistan Donor Conference in Paris, he congratulated his country on its "independent media," which, having "grown exponentially" since the ouster of the Taliban, is a harbinger of Afghanistan's imminent rise to respectable statehood. With a fresh infusion of development dollars, no doubt, Karzai could build on the thriving infrastructure, cultivate a legitimate civil society, educate girls, smoke out the extremists, and generally rid the world of its turbaned bogeymen. Not everyone buys that. Though the telecom infrastructure in Afghanistan is growing at a pace that exposes confounding contrasts—kids download videos on mobile phones while their houses lack electricity for much of the day—the mainstream press hasn't grown up as fast. Given expanding access to eyes and minds, the national press isn't as sophisticated as it could be. "Fekrat's facial f...

------- This photostory was already published in NATO website and you can see this text alongside with the fowling text there. When I was very young I used to write a bit about the world – my world and the world around me. Then, with access to new technology and the Internet, I started to learn about many new things. Soon, I remember hearing the word ‘blog’ being used in my English class. I found the first Farsi blog service. And an old friend of mine showed me his blog. It made a big impression on me. By 2004, I was running my own satire and cartoon magazine. But it was shut down by fundamentalist Islamiists. I couldn't write using my real name anymore. For a few months, I was in trouble and had to keep moving around. But I couldn’t stay silent. I started blogging again. During the first few weeks I received great feedback from people outside Afghanistan reading my blog. They liked it because it was difficult to find independent news from Afghanistan. I was writing in both Farsi a...

-------- This was published already in Global Voices Online Nasim Fekrat in Kabul has been a very active blogger for years. He has an English blog , a Dari/Farsi one , and a photo blog . He has also contributed to several citizen media projects such as Afghan Press and Afghan Penlog . He talks with us about challenges and achievements in Afghanistan's media and new projects. Q: Please tell us about Afghan Penlog. When did it start, and what are its objectives? The Afghan Association of Blog Writers (Afghan Penlog) was established in April 2006. The main objective was to build a community to bring Afghan bloggers together from around the world and defend their rights. We have also published several press releases about journalist detentions in the last few years. Recently, I have been offering online workshops for new Afghan Bloggers. In 2008, Afghan Penlog plans to teach blogging more widely in Afghanistan. I personally ran several workshops with individuals, but we wan...