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The dissemination of hate speech on Twitter is an obvious cause for concern. Until recently it seems to have relied mainly on the efforts of bigoted individuals and – although there is a lot of it – the need for manual posting has set some limits on how many offensive tweets there might be.
But now… Read more
A few months ago I began to feel that something odd was happening whenever I posted a tweet about Bahrain. My tweets, usually critical of Bahrain's government, rapidly disappeared from view – pushed down the #bahrain live Twitter feed by lots of newer tweets, mostly supporting the Bahraini… Read more
Twitter announced yesterday that it has suspended hundreds of apparently fake accounts that have been posting sectarian tweets directed against Shia Muslims.
Marc Owen Jones, who lectures in Gulf politics at Tübingen University in Germany, began investigating when he noticed a series of identical… Read more
There is no doubt that the military stalemate is a major reason leading to the Kuwait negotiations. After 14 months of full-scale war, the military situation is largely unchanged.
Thirteen months into the full scale war which has encompassed the country, negotiations started in… Read more
Progressive social policies are increasingly under attack in international forums. Muslim countries are in the forefront of this campaign but they are also aided by rightwing elements in the United States and by countries where social conservatism has become part of nationalist discourse.… Read more
A month after the US State Department published its annual country-by-country report on human rights, the Moroccan government has suddenly erupted in fury over the section about Morocco.
On Tuesday, the interior ministry denounced the report as a list of "inventions" and "lies" and… Read more
Saudi Arabia is not only denying that its forces have committed war crimes in Yemen; it is now also denying that human rights organisations have been on the ground investigating them.
Interviewed on NPR radio yesterday, General Ahmad Asiri, spokesman for the Saudi-led military coalition, was… Read more
Today Queen Elizabeth will deliver her annual speech to the British parliament setting out the government's programme for the next 12 months. High on the list of proposals is a renewed effort to combat "extremism", and one idea is to establish a register of "extremists" – similar to the… Read more
This is a short extract from "Democracy in the Middle East", an essay written by the Egyptian president while studying as a Brigadier General at the US Army War College in Pennsylvania in 2006.
Because the government exercises control over the media, the media serves no accountability role for… Read more
Robert Fisk, Middle East correspondent of the Independent newspaper, detests the internet and has often said so: "To hell with the web, it’s got no responsibility" (2008), "We should stop drinking this digital poison" (2013) and "Our addiction to the internet is as harmful as any drug" (2014).
"A… Read more
ARAB ART ONLINE: Susan Hefuna: Al Sabr Gamil (Patience is Beautiful) 2007. Ink stained on wood 140 x 170 cm. More information | Click to enlarge
