The regime vs. bloggers in Egypt

I first wrote about the targeting of bloggers in Egypt two years ago. Things seemed to have got worse. There’s stuff happening in Egypt today that we need to be mindful of. Here are a couple of stories that are a must read to get up to speed:

• Christian Science Monitor’s prescient article on the blogging in Egypt from way back in 2005 that is still useful to read
• Global Voices Online has excellent coverage of recent events. See here and here. 
• Time Magazine’s analysis of why the regime is cracking down on Egyptian bloggers
• BBC story from February last year on the lack of freedom of expression in Egypt resulting in a blogger being jailed.
• As this AFP story notes:

“The call to strike had little impact because the young people who made it have neither experience, networks nor a popular powerbase,” said renowned political analyst Mohammed Kamel al-Sayyed. “But you mustn’t underestimate it because it’s a first, set against the background of general discontent in the country,” he told AFP. Today’s younger generation recognises opposition forces other than the umbrella protest movement Kefaya whose popular demonstrations calling for Mubarak to step down grabbed the spotlight in 2005. Importantly, the Internet also provides a forum for anti-establishment surfers to disagree with each other. “We didn’t manage to show ourselves, but the strike worked,” Rihan al-Kadi said on Facebook, to which Yahia Ewadah Hassun replied “No, the strike was also a failure, but that was because of the police.”