Thursday, January 13, 2011

Update on Saudi Arabia's Clampdown on Free Speach

The news about NAZI GERMANY'S Saudi Arabia's clampdown on free speech on the Internet keeps getting worse. It turns out the rules are worse then the Saudis had previously said they would be.

- Non citizens cannot write about news (whatever the fuck that means).
-Chat room users are encouraged to register with the government.
-ALL electronic news sites must strictly abide by Islamic sharia law (you know, that system of jurisprudence that has a zillion different schools of interpretation).
-Electronic news sites must not compromise public order. (Whatever Muhammad's cock that means- probably whatever the Nazis Saudis want it to mean at any given time.)
-Mobile phone/smart phone content is included in these rules.
-All news bloggers to provide the Saudi Arabian government with detailed information on their hosting company. This could easily allow the Saudi Arabian government to block access to a particular website across domains or to even force hosting companies to take dissidents' websites offline.

And of course:

-ALL Saudi news blogs and electronic news sites are now required to include the call to Islam.

People will have to get a licence to operate a blog. If they break the rules above (and don't bribe the correct officials- it is a 3rd world country after all) they will have their sites taken down and refused permission to write on the Internet.

What this means is that ALL bloggers are now going to be strong armed into paying baksheesh to various Saudi Officials in order to keep their blogs going. I don't know about corruption in Saudi Arabia specifically but we all know about corruption in 3rd world (and especially arabic) countries. In many of those countries not only is it completely acceptable for bureaucrats to "feed at the troth", you are considered a fool for not doing so.
Here is the story from Jihadwatch about Neal Ungerleider's Story for Fast Company

Saudi Arabia to bloggers: Hey, guess what you're going to write about!

What I want to know is this. Will the internet group known as "Anonymous", who fought for Wikileaks and the freedom of information, chime in on this? It could be suspected that Julian Assange and "Anonymous" are really working for a foreign government or a group that is only anti American or anti capitalist. If they make their feelings known about this then we will know they are actually committed to their ideals. If they don't it will make me think that they are actually working for a foreign government and only paying lip service to the ideal of freedom of information.

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