and we’re doing a bit better. While last year we weighed in at 167, this year we’re at 123, a very long way from our heyday of 67 in 2002.
Let’s see how our brothers in arms are doing:
Kuwait – 85
Qatar – 90
UAE – 100
Bahrain – 123
Saudi Arabia – 154
Oman – ?
hat tip: Kuwait Unplugged
Comments
RSF’s Worldwide Press Freedom Index 2005 published
“The United States (44th) fell more than 20 places, mainly because of the imprisonment of New York Times reporter Judith Miller and legal moves undermining the privacy of journalistic sources.”
A more appropriate title for the organization might be Reporters Without Sense.
RSF’s Worldwide Press Freedom Index 2005 published
–
Dear Mahmood,
Yes this is most encouraging and a reflection of the good people from the middle of the east finding the means and ways of throwing off the despots and the corrupt. I shall have to look in to this rating to see how Iraq has changed.
I also find it interesting to note how the legal imprisonment of a single reporter can so greatly reduce the rating of the United States, where as wholesale murder and coercion of the press in other places seems to disproportionately affect the ratings of such counties as Iran etc.
I think things are really beginning to improve in the region and that the advent of mass communication at the personal level has played a major role, i.e.. the personal computer and the internet. With the advent and future refinement of wireless systems the change should be even greater and those who would stymie these freedoms will have an even more difficult time keeping us down.
On an aside issue we have to deal with certain reductions of liberty because of the abuse of the system by criminals and terrorists, this works if we trust our leaders, if they are trustworthy. If they abuse the system to further their own goals, well it only brings about their downfall sooner or their elevation if they champion freedom.
In Canada as in may places one must register our telephone connections much like our cars and even our weapons etc. but the government can not go about listening to our conversations with out a court order. Things just are not like that in other places but they are moving in the right direction.
These are most interesting times that we live in and I am so pleased with the my Middle Eastern Brothers and Sisters coming out of the isolation that has kept them in the dark for so long.
—————————————-
Here’s an example of western regulation: I had a nickname associated with my msn passport that is required to play back gammon competitively at the game site. Someone from msn sent me an e-mail stating that my nickname Fark_Iran is permanently banned. I changed it to Woodymullahpie, no offences to the non hijacked clerics etc. imbued with Gods real compassions…
Kindly
Augurwell
aegisi@sympatico.ca
.
Re: RSF’s Worldwide Press Freedom Index 2005 published
why is that then?
RSF’s Worldwide Press Freedom Index 2005 published
PS
Now God created everything so why would God be offended by anything that God created.
For example it is legal in Canada for women to go around naked from the waist up, it took a vote someplace to secure this freedom. Equality deemed that when Jane or Christine were hard at it down at the construction site working on a steel driving hammer in hundred degree weather, she has the same right as Bill or Bob to remove their shirt in order to be cool. (And let me tell you it is cool for some women to do this, sans sag.)
After all the whobideehow died down the religious right fundamentalists found that women do not go around en masse with their boobs flapping in the breeze as they had thought would happen. But they could if they wanted too and that was all that the women wanted and peace prevailed. To be frank with you all I like the fact that things are covered up because it makes the uncovering so much more exciting. (The treat of the teat might lose some of its mysterious wonder if they were so common place as to be revealed every where all the time.),(Maybe that schould be written “Best of the breast.)
Everything points to us being children of God and this implies that we may grow up some day to be adults if you follow my reasoning.
I think that I am agnostic which means God is beyond my current full comprehension.
RSF’s Worldwide Press Freedom Index 2005 published
154? I dread to think who could be worse off than us!
A Saudi