Ethan blogs about his trip to Jordan. Quite fascinating, including Ahmad Humeid’s tantalizing idea that Jordan could be a bridgeblog country. A snippet from Ethan’s post:

…I was busily looking for Jordanian geeks, and ignored the small group that was beginning to form, as they were clearly “the cool kids”, laughing, chain smoking and snapping digital photos. Turns out the geeks are the cool kids in Amman, a city is starting to take technology very seriously.

Ethan also points to Jad Madi’s The War against Terrorism for Geeks. The parts I understood — I speak first-year Unix with a Lisp — were funny. [Note: Ethan corrects me in the comments. Jad didn’t write the post; he pointed to it. Sun Ray wrote it. Then Sun Ray wrote an exegesis (thanks, Tim). Sorry for the sloppy attribution!] [Tags: bridgeblog EthanZuckerman jordan]

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GlobalVoices has aggregated links to Egyptians bloggers protesting the mass murder at Sharm el-Sheik. Karim Eslahy reports it was “small turnout and the cops made them leave,” but one of the commenters says there was a protest with over 1,000 attending at Sharm el-Sheik itself:

“There is no God but God and terrorism is the enemy of God,” chanted the Egyptian protesters, including hotel chefs, technicians and road sweepers, as they marched along the main road of Sharm el-Sheikh…

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The Iraqi blogger, Khalid Jarrar, who had been taken in by the Iraqi government has been freed. Look for an update on his blog… (Thanks to GlobalVoices for the link.) [Technorati tags: iraq GlobalVoices]

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Khalid Jarrar, a Global Voices blogger, has been detained. Global Voices reports:

Khalid’s family are calling for his release, or at very least that he be charged and tried for something. Raed [his brother] says: “Our goal now is to ask the mokhabarat to take Khalid to court and reveal what exactly he is being charged with (if anything).”

…

Please show your support for the Khalid Jarrar by posting supportive comments at Raed‘s and Khalid‘s latest posts. If you’re a blogger, please help spread the word by linking to them.

At Raed’s blog you can share the family’s joy when they discover, after two days, that Khalid had been taken by the secret service, which “would be considered a disaster and a violation of human rights” anywhere else.

[Technorati tags: globalvoices iraq blogs]

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Here’s an explanation of globish, first in English and then in globish. Very cool.

About ten years ago, someone — I think a German — proposed a language that permitted speakers to mix in words from whatever language they want. So, you might say, “The ganze monde capiche this lingua.” It’s up to you. But I’ve lost the reference… (T Byfield has found a related, or possibly identical, effort.) [Technorati tags: globish GlobalVoices]

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Global Voices has undergone a total redesign. Nice job! (By the way, it’s reachable at http://www.GlobalVoicesOnline.org, as well as at the harder-to-remember http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/globalvoices/

Here’s an example of the sort blog coverage Global Voices’ daily roundup offers:

Crossroads Arabia points out two interesting developments from Saudi Arabia. First, the Grand Mufti of the mosque in Mecca–Saudi Arabia’s highest religious figure–has condemmed the London bombings. Second, government officials will apparently start arresting and charging clerics who issue fawtas that justify terrorist acts.

[Technorati tag: GlobalVoices]

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Global Voices rounds up more Moslem voices blogging about the recent attempt to frighten London. [Technorati tags: globalvoices london]

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Ethan responds reasonably and forcefully to Brian‘s response to his snarky-but-telling post about Live 8.

For me it comes down to this: I can’t imagine that people going to a big rock concert will change the mind of any G8 leader, but if Live 8 makes debt relief trendy, I’m all for it. After all, trendiness seemed to have an effect on ending Apartheid in the 80s.

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From Rebecca MacKinnon:

On Global Voices, Ethan Zuckerman has a roundup of African blogger reaction to Live8: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/globalvoices/?p=263

Ethan adds his own two cents on his own blog here: http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/?p=98

[Technorati tags: GlobalVoices EthanZuckerman Live8]

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Bev Trayner gets appropriately complex about the intersections of communities, languages, norms and metaphors. Here’s a snippet:

Recently at two different conferences which represent two different international communities I belong to I was aware of the genre boundaries we are crossing in our work on communities, technologies and learning. The combination of different modes and technologies and a focus on emerging processes and diversity changes the whole nature of communication. It also changes our ways of of working together, what gets done, whose voices get heard, and where power lies…

Meanwhile, in my local community I have to develop another Zen-like robustness to help me through the quagmire of rules, norms and fixed expectations. The complexity of my universe here is to be found in the discovering or revealing of nests of relations and realities…

(Thanks to Nancy White for the link.) [Technorati tags: NancyWhite BevTrayner]

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