Anger and sadness
-------
Thoughts and reflections on literature, language, culture, society, religion and politics
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.0 comments Labels:interview,liberazione
Yesterday around 10:30AM there was a heavy conflict between Taliban insurgents and Afghan security forces in Surobi Tangi area (
Also, yesterday three female aid workers for the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and their Afghan driver were shot dead by gunmen who opened fire on their vehicle near the capital
0 comments Labels:ANA,Taliban,Terrorism
--------
I am in
If this course was held in
One of the topics we had to work on was ‘dealing with the past’. Working with 8 people from different countries in one group on how we can deal with the past is not such an easy job. In most of the cases it is taboo to write about the past or it might not be so secure, or even dangerous. In a situation like
We only overviewed the history of
For several days, my heart was wounded. I couldn't imagine what happened to Jewish people there. But some times it was also very irritating when some of my colleagues were making funny pictures with the commemoration statue of a Jew who died from the severe conditions of living in one of the concentration camps. Maybe they had only eyes to look at the statue and the pictures around them. Maybe they only have eyes to look but have no heart to feel. May be most of us are like this, without doubt. Who feels our pains here? No one.
The Neuengamme concentration camp, close to
Anyway, the workshop gave me the idea to build a group of researchers, to research about the massacre and genocide of the Hazara people of
I hope to make a research-centre to research our past. This can also help Internationals because they can learn how many problems we had in our past. Unfortunately today, foreign politicians and those people who intend to favour Afghanistan and who are theorizing the construction of an Afghani nation-state don’t see that this will be a completely impossible mission. They have the wrong approach.
0 comments Labels:germany,Tourism,travel,workshop
-------
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.
0 comments Labels:bildblog,blog,blogger,blogging
--------
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 features are distinctly Mongoloid, in accordance with his Hazara heritage. His skin is rough and his look rugged, powerful in a primitive way; a rack of oversize teeth is arranged in what might best be described as a rebellious manner. He's fiercely independent, even irreverent, but then he's never had a reason to believe in the benevolence of a higher authority. Fekrat's father wanted him dead by the time he was 12 because Nasim didn't care for Allah and couldn't remember to pray, so he spent his adolescence fending for himself. He taught himself English, photography, journalism, the anatomy of the Internet, and he put it all together by posting his thoughts and photographs online. Then he started encouraging others to do the same and raising money on his Web sites so he could go into the provinces and spread the gospel".
Click the complete article here
or open this link http://www.slate.com/id/2194806/
-----------
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
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.
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
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
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
----
I am writing this post from
I hope to meet some useful and nice people there from other countries. Their will be 23 participants. I don’t know if I can screen some pictures from
I like to share many things with other participants. I will try to write my experiences from
0 comments Labels:travel
------
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
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
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
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
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
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
0 comments Labels:Afghan,blog,blogging,workshop
-------
A man with his bird in the cage walks to the sunset in graveyard, western part of Kabul
0 comments Labels:Photography
------
The current controversy over the Juvenile Delinquency law illustrates the conflicts within the Afghan legal system. The conflicts are rooted in Afghan history itself. "From the 1880's until the 1960's, Afghanistan essentially had a dual judicial system. A system of sharia courts headed by clergy handled areas ... such as criminal law, family and personal law laid down in the sharia. A separate system of government courts handled state law issues, such as those relating to commerce, taxation, and civil servants." In 1964, an Afghan constitution, ratified by the Loya Jirga attempted to bring those threads closer together, but it was ripped apart again in the period of war with the Soviet Union and during the rule of the Taliban.
Following the defeat of the Taliban at the hands of US forces in 2002, an international conference in Bonn stipulated the appointment of a "Judicial Commission" whose role was to "to rebuild the domestic justice system in accordance with Islamic principles, international standards, the rule of law and Afghan legal traditions." That sweeping task proved easier said than done. A Stanford University study described some of the difficulties which arose.
0 comments Labels:Afghan,children,law
For the first time in
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
This was just the first blogging workshop in
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
Blogging is new in
Around twenty thousand Afghan blogs have yet been created in cyberspace by Afghans inside and outside the country, and using different service providers.
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,
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
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
0 comments Labels:blogging,workshop
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.
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 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.
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.
0 comments Labels:blogging
-------
This was already written but i forgot to put here.
On Sunday January 13, Corps No 201 Commander Brigadier General Mohamad Rahim Wardak while visiting the Maiwand military base in Char district of Logar province said: "In 2008, the Afghan national army will lead the whole of operations in Afghanistan, with the help of coalition forces."
0 comments Labels:ANA
------
Hi Nasim, my name is Chiara, I have 11 years hold and I saw the foto of the little girl on the ground with the ice and the snow around her. Franca,Andrea and I will try to help you.
Chiara
A message to Chiara and her friends in Italy
I am sorry to write a bit late to you. You know what? I didn't write on paper nor on my white board to come back and write to you, but every day while opening my blog i remembered your comment.
I was looking for a suitable time to write you.
I was thinking how much the picture of this little girl, sleeping at the side of the road, in the ice and snow, can touch you and makes you feel close to her. I assume that she is of your age. When I met her I saw her eyes looking at me, asking me for help. She was shivering. I saw lots of people who were crossing her by, without offering to help her or try to understand her little heart.
Do you know how much she was suffering? Do you know why she came there, to lay down in the ice and snow? Do you know if she was hungry, or even had no food to eat at all?
You might think sleeping on the ice and snow isn't a big thing for a few minutes, but how about entire days? Do you know her mother sent her to work? But because she couldn’t find a job she finally fell down, on the ice?
My heart is still full of pains, my heart is crying till now. I took several pictures of her, but not only her. There were lots of others in the same conditions.
This winter more than 300 people died of exposure to the harsh weather conditions, because they didn’t have shoes, socks, gloves and warm clothes.
May be you didn’t hear about that woman who with her child died of exposure right after returning from the city. People found her body with her small child in early morning at the edge of a road, covered with snow.
Do you know there are lots of children who can’t go to school? They don’t have a chance, and they don’t have food. There are lots of children in the streets, they are the supporters of their families. What do these conditions mean for children who have a car, bicycle, and toys and who are going to school?
Afghan children don’t go to school, they don’t even have shoes.
Let's think about how we can help survive the Afghan children
0 comments Labels:Afghan children
All rights reserved © Nasim Fekrat, Farsi blog Kabul Diary .