Some good news for a change! The State Commissioner Committee in Egypt has rejected the request made by the judge Abdel Fattah Mourad to block 51 websites and blogs deemed insulting the state’s dignity and threatening Egypt’s interests. In the meantime, the investigation on blogger Amr Gharbia, who was charged for defaming Judge Mourad, has …
The High Court dismissed a defamation case brought by the president of the Arabian Gulf University Dr Rafia Ghubash against journalist Hisham Al-Zayani. I wish to offer my congratulations to Mr. Al-Zayani for winning the case, even though the decision has taken over 2 years to be determined. This rare victory for the written word …
Lulu once again has an excellent opinion which is well worth reading: Hala Gorani, presenter of “Inside the Middle East,” apparently was in Bahrain, interviewing Shi’a poor villagers, Nabeel Rajab, and a couple of government Ministers. The program started with an assertion that Bahrain, despite being one of the world’s richest countries in terms of …
There is an excellent investigative and opinion piece in Al-Wasat today about blogs and blogging in Bahrain by Adel Marzooq (Arabic). He raises quite a number of questions which require some mulling over and addressed – maybe at our next bloggers’ gathering or through a series of posts (or podcasts?) as thinking about them can …
The Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich has released an in-depth report about blogs and forums in Bahrain and how they affected the political discourse in this country: Bahrain in transition, from blog to street The large and rapidly diversifying Bahraini blogosphere is opening up fields of discussion and debate that could never have …