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Does it matter that Recep Tayyip Erdogan has just named as his chief adviser a former journalist who alleges that foreign powers have tried to kill the Turkish prime minister by telekinesis? Here are some reasons why Tuesday’s appointment of Yigit Bulut, a Sorbonne graduate who has also alleged that Lufthansa is plotting against Turkey (pictured), may be of relevance.

The prime minister is the overwhelming power in a country in which he has steadily added to his clout during a decade in office, which has seen him win three elections. The last few weeks has shown several instances in which supposedly independent Turkish institutions appear to have fallen in line with his preferences – whether by making a former governing party MP editor-in-chief of a seized newspaper, fining television channels that screened extensive footage of the protests or launching an investigation apparently spurred by his denunciations of the interest rate lobby.

Mustafa Akyol, a Turkish writer who has backed Erdogan in the past, says Bulut’s appointment shows that the prime minister takes the conspiracy theories seriously – if only because he wants to use them as propaganda ahead of presidential elections next year.

In an atmosphere of extreme polarisation, the country's state and many independent news organisations are now solidly backing the interim president Adly Mansour, who was installed by the army last week. TV channels sympathetic to Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood have been shut down.

Following the fall of Hosni Mubarak in February 2011, Egyptian state media first moved to support the military and then, after his election last June, to back Morsi. Al Ahram's current editor, Mamdouh al-Wali, was appointed as part of a process known as the "Brotherhoodisation" of key institutions. He has not been seen at the paper since the president's removal.

"The story of the state-owned media is really shameful," said Hani Shukrullah, who was sacked as editor of al-Ahram online this year. "You have the same administration and the same people who before 2011 were defending Mubarak and describing revolutionaries as depraved troublemakers moving to support the military and the revolution and then moving to the Brotherhood once Morsi came to power. Now they are moving back again.

in Egypt's divisive media landscape, it is often big-name hosts like "El Boss" Eissa and Hadidi — or Al-Faraeen channel's Tawfik Okasha — who can dominate the media discourse, for better or worse.

the weird, wonderful and — at times — toxic world of the Egyptian news talk show

incitement and emotive broadcasting is on the rise. "There's been a resurgence in this sort of television, … driven by emotions and anger," a sort of television he says has grown more "hysterical" in the past nine months.

Only a day after the US-based watchdog Freedom House, in its "Freedom of the Press 2014" report that was released May 1, relegated Turkey from the league of “partly free” countries to the league of “not free” countries, Davutoglu exploded. Speaking at a joint news conference with Omani Foreign Minister Yousef bin Alawi bin Abdullah in Ankara on May 2, he said, “No one can put Turkey in that category. All kinds of opinions are openly voiced in Turkey. In this sense, the press freedom in Turkey is freer than some countries called 'partly free.'” If he had left it there, there would be no problem. But, he urged Turkish reporters to act against the Freedom House report: “I’m calling on the press and the intellectuals to display a stance against this report. We expect our journalists to reject this report,” he said, and alleged that “a perception operation is being conducted against Turkey.” The term “perception operation” is increasingly used by government officials and pro-government media to describe an alleged smear campaign underway against the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government of Turkey.

in a manner that would further complicate the AKP’s image in the Western world, the pro-AKP mouthpiece daily Star drew attention to Freedom House President David J. Kramer’s “Jewish origin,” and also alleged that Freedom House is financed by philanthropist George Soros and Jewish lobbies. Mehmet Ocaktan, editor-in-chief of the staunchly pro-AKP daily Aksam (who is also a former MP of the ruling party), was very blunt. He wrote: “Half-witted Turkish friends of proven anti-Turkey foreign sources are quietly skilled in covering up anything good that has been done. For example, they grab as a salvation nothing but a scandalous Turkey report of the Freedom House that is financed by famous speculator Soros, who has made a billion dollar profit from domestic troubles he instigates in various countries, and [the] Israeli financial lobby. For one thing, the data about detained journalists in Turkey [are] old and almost none of them [are] accurate. For Freedom House, [which] always lists Israel among free countries, to put Turkey in the same bracket as Uganda, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Tanzania and Kenya is not only dimwitted but also an indicator of absolute ignorance.”

 “What I think would change the way people look at Turkey is if they unblocked YouTube, if they didn’t block Twitter. I think that’s what drives people other places to say, ‘Hey, maybe freedom of expression isn’t that great in Turkey right now,’”

occupation also corrupts the Israelis

Ms. Abergil, whose compulsory service ended last year, refused to accept any responsibility for harming Israel’s international reputation, saying: We will always be attacked. Whatever we do, we will always be attacked.

a deal on accessing users' data that will avert a ban on the phone's messenger service, a Saudi official said Saturday. The agreement would involve placing a BlackBerry server inside Saudi Arabia to allow the government to monitor messages and allay official fears the service could be used for criminal purposes

I was invited, along with a significant number of bloggers and online notables to attend one of several meetings with the minister of ICT, Marwan Jumah, who along with a legal aid, presented the law and, to his credit, tackled whatever questions, issues or concerns we had to offer. At the time, no one knew anything about the law so it was quite difficult to effectively argue the points, this is to say nothing of the absent legal background. However, to their credit, the concerns of those presented were taken in to consideration and proper amendments were even made to the memorandum accompanying the actual law before it was presented to the cabinet.

This new cyber crime law is aimed at tackling specific issues related to online crimes, such as hacking, identity theft, financial transaction crimes, etc. And that’s all perfectly fine. The ICT ministry made the argument that this law was “urgent” enough to pass as a temporary law because of the number of cyber related crimes that are being presented before the judiciary every month. However, I am inclined to believe that given the fact that the Internet has been around for over 15 years in Jordan, it is unlikely that the government has just now noticed that crimes concerning its citizens are taking place online and there is a need for various protections.

The mere approval of the law made international headlines and will likely place Jordan firmly on the Internet Enemies list for the first time - putting out that beacon of hope we once took pride in throughout a region of highly regulated and censored Internet.

US President Barack Obama has described as "hateful" and "offensive" the claim by Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that most people believe the US government was behind the 9/11 attacks. Mr Obama was speaking exclusively to BBC Persian television, which broadcasts to Iran and Afghanistan.

"This is not a matter of us choosing to impose punishment on the Iranians," he told the BBC. "This is a matter of the Iranian government ultimately betraying the interests of its own people by isolating it further." And he pointed out that countries such as Russia and China had also backed the UN sanctions. "Most of these sanctions are targeted at the regime, at its military, and we think that over time, hopefully, there's enough reflection within the Iranian government, that they say to themselves, you know, 'This is not the best course for our people. This is not the best course for Iran.'"

the Iranians "seem to be talking about talks about talks".

About 46 per cent of the world's people believe that al-Qaeda launched the 9/11 attacks, while 15 per cent think the US government was behind the assault, and seven per cent blame Israel, according to a2008 world public opinion study carried out by the Program on International Policy (PIPA) Attitudes at the University of Maryland, which interviewed 16,063 people worldwide. But Ahmadinejad views himself as a leader in the Arab and Muslim worlds. And, in these regions, surveys show significant sectors of the population believe that the US and Israel launched the 9/11 attacks to meet their own geopolitical goals. In Jordan, 31 per cent of those polled by PIPA believe Israel was behind the attacks, while only 11 per cent blame it on al-Qaeda. Likewise, 43 per cent of Egyptians blame Israel, and 12 per centthink the US was responsible, while only 16 per cent think al-Qaeda brought down the towers. A 2006 poll from Scrippsnews says 36 per cent of Americans consider it "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that US government officials either allowed the attacks to be carried or launched the attacksthemselves.

Ahmadinejad is speaking to a significant global constituency. There is little evidence to suggest that they include "the majority of the American people, as well as most nations and politicians around the world", as the Iranian leader said in his UN speech. But the 9/11 "conspiracy theories" are not a fringe phenomenon either.

“Israeli agents have become more aggressive in targeting Muslims living in the United States as well as in operating against critics.”

A researcher at the London-based International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation told the BBC that the number of radical websites was now far higher than the figure given by Interpol. "It's well into the thousands in English alone,"

commentary in the Arab and Israeli media showed little optimism for the future of negotiations

Opposition to settlement building is widespread in opinion columns, with a prominent exception in Michael Freund's "Rev Up the Bulldozers," published on Arutz Sheva, a right-wing news site. Mr Freund, expressing a view widely held by settlement supporters, argues that:...settlements are not the obstacle to peace. They never have been. The true obstacle to peace remains what it has always been: the Palestinian refusal to accept a permanent and sovereign Jewish presence in the land of Israel. In the right-of-the-centre Jerusalem Post, however, David Newman argues that as the settlements grow, evacuating them as part of a two-state solution becomes increasingly difficult, writing that "every additional house, family and road make a peace agreement less plausible." He continues, condemning Netanyahu's decision:Israel is the stronger side in this ongoing conflict and, as such, is the one able to make the critical concessions and lead the way. They should be seen as concessions from a position of strength and not, as the right wing argues, a sign of surrender. [...] Back to square one. No settlement freeze, no significant peace talks. All of us, Israelis and Palestinians alike, will suffer the consequences.

To read full translations and further commentary, please go to Meedan.net

The Associated Press has been looking in some detail at the likely effects of the royal decree. While some Saudis view it as pointing the way to a modernisation of religious teaching, others see it merely as an attempt to assert state control. The AP report points out that the officially-approved clerics – Council of Senior Religious Scholars – are far from progressive and many of them can be considered hardliners. "Beyond strict edicts on morality, they reinforce a worldview whereby non-Muslims and even liberal or Shiite Muslims are considered infidels, and their stances on jihad, or holy war, at times differ only in nuances from al-Qaeda's," it says.

media watchdogs said the action was more likely taken in response to the station’s programming, which had at times been critical, or satirical, of the Iraqi government. The move by security forces is an ominous sign for the country’s press, which, for the first time in decades had been enjoying relative freedom.

Ziad al Jillily, head of Iraq’s Journalistic Freedom Observatory, said that freedom of speech and journalism were the sole benefit of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

The media here is now freer than Syria’s or Iran’s and less partisan than, say, Lebanon, where most of the media outlets are owned or controlled by politicians of various stripes. Basking in this freedom, both news and entertainment programs regularly push the boundaries. In an Iraqi version of "Punk’d," for example, which aired on Baghdadiya, actors played pranks on celebrities that often involved fake car bombs, checkpoint harassment and live bullets. As the celebrities screamed and fainted on screen, and readers complained, Punk’d Baghdad-style might not have been a good idea. But it did come from a lively, growing culture of media freedom.