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Economic Impolitic Life Technic

The fight at the edge of liberty

<![CDATA[BuzzMachine… by Jeff Jarvis: Middle-Eastern regimes are discovering blogs… and jailing bloggers. Two are in jail in Iran (and one is in exile). Now a Bahraini blogger has been arrested for what he wrote on his blog. His “crimes:” 1. Defaming the royalty 2. Inciting hatred towards the regime 3. Publishing news to destabilize security […]

<![CDATA[BuzzMachine… by Jeff Jarvis:

Middle-Eastern regimes are discovering blogs… and jailing bloggers. Two are in jail in Iran (and one is in exile). Now a Bahraini blogger has been arrested for what he wrote on his blog. His “crimes:”

1. Defaming the royalty

2. Inciting hatred towards the regime

3. Publishing news to destabilize security (“????? ?????“)

4. Violating the Press Laws

5. Violating the Communication Laws

The thing bloggers here in the States need to keep firmly in mind is that we have unique freedoms to speak (and we need to protect them from people who claim we are endangering the country by speaking our minds), but the “edge” of this movement is in other countries, where freedom barely exists or has no foothold at all.
How do we fight back? Publishing doesn’t hurt the royal family in Bahrain quite enough. What we need are the kinds of protests and boycotts that brought down apartheid in South Africa. Market forces are a powerful tool.]]>