Media in Middle East & North Africa

Since last week, Blue Host, the hosting service which is used for this very blog [and Kamangir as well], and the number one recommendation for Wordpress hosting by Wordpress itself, has adopted a policy of suspending its Iranian users. In some cases the bloggers have been given a short notice in order to back up their data and leave. This is despite Bluehost’s good reputation in the blogosphere. The matter of fact is that many of these bloggers, including Arash Kamangir who blogs at kamangir.net, have no connection to the Iranian administration and have had to take use of a foreign hosting service in order to freely express their opinions. The important factor is that Bluehost is not committing any illegal action. What is being done is exactly what article 13 in Bluehost Terms of Service mandates. The article does explicitly mention Iran among the sanctioned countries, Sanctioned Countries presently include, among others, Balkans, Belarus, Burma, Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Cuba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran, Iraq, former Liberian Regime of Charles Taylor, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, and Zimbabwe…Each Sanctioned Country, all governmental, commercial, or other entities located therein, and all individuals located in any Sanctioned Country are hereby prohibited from registering or signing up with, subscribing to, or using any service of BlueHost.Com.

The Persian Bloggers who use Bluehost are dispersed all over the world and produce content for people from Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and other countries. The action taken by Bluehost, while entirely legal, will harm the Persian blogosphere.

In the Arabic media, editorials condemned "Iranian irredentism" and drew comparisons with Saddam's ambitions and their catastrophic end.

Boyd argues that Saudi broadcasting developed largely in order to balance such attacks

The Voice of the Arabs had been very carefully designed to become a regional phenomenon

There is absolutely no supporting evidence for the contention that Nasser intended to allow The Voice of the Arabs to criticise his own regime. However, it is true that Cairo’s deliberate escalation of pro-Palestinian, anti-Zionist rhetoric in order to mobilise the Arab masses eventually turned into a trap from which Egypt could not escape.

Wayne Borg

Another arm of the government, Abu Dhabi Media, last year agreed to a $1 billion deal to make video games and movies with Warner Brothers

a daily prime-time news show from Abu Dhabi on CNN International

An Iraqi lawmaker on Monday blasted accusations that he'd ordered mafia-like murders, charging that the case was politically motivated because of his hard-line stance on human rights issues.

The bombing exposed how much the heavily guarded Green Zone — then under U.S. military control — was still vulnerable to attacks.

He said that the accusations were part of a political attack because of his advocacy on human rights

young people really are more open and older ones more set in their ways, according to a fascinating article in the Scientific American.

To bring this back to the Scientific American magazine’s observations about openness to new experiences tending to decline gradually in some, inclusiveness is a key to successful culture change. The challenge is to motivate people and get them engaged by helping them to participate, and some sizzle to sell the steak often really helps.