Bloggers In Jail

For God's sake, what is wrong with this region? We have heard of bloggers being arrested, Mahmoud in Bahrain is facing a defamation case, and now an Egyptian blogger has been sentenced to four years in jail for 'insulting Islam and [Egyptian president/dictator] Hosni Mubarak'. Egyptian Blogger Gets 4Years

What the hell is wrong with Middle East governments? Are they so weak that they cannot stand a little criticism? Is it the end of the world when somebody points out that Egypt's Mubarak is a dictator? This is not exactly news, now is it? As for 'insulting Islam', why is that considered a crime? People everywhere have different views of various religions, not all of which would be welcomed by the followers of those religions. But to throw people in jail for speaking their minds is just totally barbaric.

I'm sorry, people think what they think, and you cannot stop them from doing it. Governments cannot legislate that people must think what they think. Not real governments, anyway. I have always been unable to understand why such a populous country as Egypt, supposedly a democracy, has allowed Mubarak to continue in power for so long. They have the political mechanisms to get rid of him, don't they?

But here's the point. Nobody, in any place or at any time, should be threatened with jail time for simply saying what they believe, unless they have actually slandered, libelled or defamed someone. Journalists, bloggers, the average Abdul on the street should be free to say what they like: how can it be otherwise?

Throwing people in jail, blocking blogs, closing down newspapers, imposing censorship. These are all, ultimately, pointless, inhumane, barbaric activities. They show lack of respect for individual God-given rights. No Government can legitimately take those rights away from people. I am disgusted by the actions of the Egyptian government in this case.

Borat Banned

I know this is old news, but our wise and tolerant movie censors have decided that Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan will not be showing in cinemas in the UAE. I am so pleased they made that decision on my behalf, because I am too stupid to make it for myself.

And what's with Kazakhstan anyway? Before this movie happened I had heard the name, but couldn't place it accurately on a map, didn't know that it is bigger than Western Europe, had no clue that the capital was called Almaty, and was quite unaware that some of it is very pretty and they want tourists to go there. I think Sacha Baron Cohen has done them a great favour in the 'there ain't no such thing as bad publicity' department.

Maybe the movie was banned so we could cuddle up to Kazakhstan and get some cheap oil and gas from them? Just a thought.

Meanwhile, if the Chinese DVD Lady is reading this, please swing by, my dirhams are waiting.

Bahraini Blogger Blocked!

One of Bahrain's most popular blogs, Mahmood's Den, has been blocked by the Bahraini Government. So much for freedom of speech under a democratically-elected Government.

UPDATE 2nd November: following a meeting between Mahmood and MinInf, and his agreement to pull 4 articles about the Bandergate scandal, the block has been lifted.

Firefox Blocked!

This is just unbelievable. I was trying to download Mozilla Firefox on BetterArf's laptop. You can get to the site ok, you can hit the 'download' button, and you can read and accept the terms and conditions. And then you get the pale blue screen of death.

Itisalot (© Prometheus): WTF are you playing at now?

The Light Blue Screen of Censorship

Etisalat yesterday unblocked a bunch of big-name websites. Things like youtube, hi5, orkut, myspace, friendsreunited etc.

We are supposed to be grateful.

Although Etisalat has made no official comment on the unblocking as yet, there is speculation that it has something to do with the impending launch of rival telco du. And while some insiders are saying that du is unlikely to be 'better' than Etisalat, I'm inclined to wonder how they could actually be worse.

Plenty of sites are still blocked, however, and some are suffering from terminal tcp_errors - this is Etisalat's other kind of blocking strategy where you don't actually get to see the light blue screen of censorship...



you just get this...



Which makes you think that the site is not actually blocked, there's just some kind of technical problem that might go away if you come back later. Except it doesn't go away. This strategy is still applied to flickr.com and clickatell.com. Clickatell is interesting because it doesn't 'contravene the religious, cultural, political and moral values of the UAE', it's simply a competitor to Etisalat's overpriced SMS service.