Transcript of Kazakh Journalist Interview
Beatings, midnight phone calls and a culture of fear This is the transcript of my interview with an independent journalist in Kazakhstan.  He was commiserating with me about my hospital stay, and mentioned that he too, had suffered because of his political beliefs.  I grabbed my little camera, and asked him to describe what happened to him. You want to know about hospital. What happened. For me it happened because we have this public association here of professionals. And our organization, they try to take away from us. Apparently, it was authorities and in that particular case, you know, there, some guys show up and they just start beating.

Kazakhstan: Old Stalinist Repression in a New CyberWar Wrapper
Under the guise of “protecting citizens from terrorists and porn,” the government in Kazakhstan is eliminating freedom of speech and of the press via a particularly toxic cocktail of Old Stalinist School beatings, jailings and intimidation – and cutting-edge CyberWar attacks. I conducted a series of interviews with journalists, bloggers, opposition political leaders and human rights workers in the cities of Astana and Almaty, Kazakhstan. I was there because in mid-October of 2009, the US State Department invited me to travel to Kazakhstan to do a series of traini

On the Way Home from Kazakhstan – Eagles and the Gobi Desert
I’m done with my training sessions for journalists in Kazakhstan, and this trip really stretched the boundaries of my knowledge. These are the issues that I was asked to address: 1. DDoS attacks that rival anything else in the world, taking down any journalist who dares to challenge the government 2. How to use the web to help in investigative reporting 3. How to monetize web content 4. How to grow web audiences in a country where the internet penetration rate is below 20%, and the ad marketing is in its infancy 5. How to use social media to help publicize your web page – or to get the news out when your page is taken down (see #1 above)

Happy Students in Astana, Kazakhstan
This is the last class I taught in Astana – they were very engaged with the idea of moving from traditional media to “New Media,” particularly with blogging.  The main question on everyone’s mind was “How do I drive more traffic to my site?”

The Endless Sub-Siberian Steppes of Kazakhstan
I got a real lesson in why the Huns, Tatars & Golden Horde were both nomads & ferocious warriors today.  The plane flight from Astana the Gleaming to Almaty the Ancient took me over an incredible stretch of flat, brown steppe.