Restrictions on Press freedom continues in New Year in most countries
Hannah Allam of the McClatchy/Tribune newspapers — she’s the Cairo Bureau Chief — wrote an interesting piece a few days ago on the challenges facing bloggers in the Middle East. She offers a rundown of the challenges many Arab countries have imposed on journalists and on bloggers.
Here’s the link:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/world/5409868.html
MidEastYouth.com, one of the most visited blogs on the Internet from the Middle East maintains updates on the cases of several bloggers who have been arrested including in Egypt, Cairo and Iran. MidEastYouth (which I blog as a token dinosaur -- the babyboomer blogger) is one of the only blogger communities that mixes Arabs and Israelis on the same board -- a fascinating and encouraging sign if you ask me. It's a great place to share info and to keep a finger ont he pulse of writers and journalism in the Middle East.
And, Reporters without Borders lists the best (1) to worst countries (169) when it comes to press freedom and restrictions. Interestingly enough, when it comes to media crackdowns, the Arab countries are not in the 10 worst any more although the Palestinian National Authority is listed as 12th from worst.
The best in the Arab World is the United Arab Emirates, which only makes it to 65.
Israel ranks 44 from the top, way ahead of any Arab countries, and is also better than the United States, which ranks at a unimpressive 48 from the top considering it claims to be the “leader of the free world.”
Digression alert!!!
Maybe the United States should start leading, but that would require electing a leader who is not a moron. -- Okay, I've gotten in trouble before for referring to the prez as a "moron." My son was in kindergarten last year at during a President's Day discussion, the teacher asked who knew the first president? Who was Illinois' president? And who was the current president? That's when my son raised his hand and said, "I know. He's George Bush." And what do we know about him, the teacher asked? "My daddy says he's a moron." Of course, the kindergarten teacher called to say that he may or may not be a moron but we shouldn't refer to the president that way. I noted, it could have been a lot worse and I was doing my best to restrain myself. :) ...
I can only imagine what Bush calls us Arab Americans. Hey, in seven years, NAAJA has sent letter after letter asking President Bush or a surrogate to speak at one of our conferences. We couldn't even get that waste-of-money bureaucrat that Bush created to direct PR in the Middle East to come (the now vacant post of Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy). Why would a President want to lobby the Arab American media, I guess, when he has been arresting some of them? (Two of the defendants in the Sami al-Arian persecution are members of NAAJA). And hey, Bush thinks we Arab Americans are "terrorists" anyway. It's only fair. He's arrested enough of us since Sept. 11, 2001, although nearly all of the cases have been defeated. BOO-RAH! YEAH!
Okay. Moron is a strong word to use to describe any president ... I guess ... Maybe to use one of Donald Rumsfeld's favorite ambiguous meaningless distraction words: Disputed. Bush is a disputed president.
I digress. Digression Alert Status returns to DefCon 4.
Anyway, here’s the link to that list from Reporters without Borders:
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=24025
Ray Hanania