Associated Press reports that a Bahrain court this week rejected request for the early release of jailed human rights activist human Nabeel Rajab, subject of my 28 November posting.  His lawyer Jalila al-Sayed says a judge rejected her request Sunday to approve a conditional early release.  Bahrain’s state news agency says Rajab was arrested on […]

    An American citizen is the first foreign national imprisoned in the UAE in violation of a new cybercrimes law. It began in October 2013, when twenty-nine year old Shezanne Cassim uploaded a satirical video he and a group of friends had made.  Six months later, he and his four friends received phone calls […]

  Kwikdesk is only one week old, but a local version of the social messaging tool has already hit China, with the translation help of  Wu’er Kaixi, the Chinese dissident known for his role in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. Kwikdesk allows users to anonymously send messages of up to 300 words with hashtags.  They […]

China  says its campaign against what it calls “online rumors” has really cleaned up the internet. Ren Xianliang, deputy director of China’s State Internet Information Office, told reporters in Beijing Thursday, “The rumors have declined significantly, but this hasn’t affected the normal flow of information.” Last September, China expanded existing censorship laws by announcing tough […]

He calls himself Reverend Billy, the pastor of the Church of Earthalujah–otherwise known as the Church of Stop Shopping Now.  And when he and his “choir master” Nehemiah Luckett, appear in a New York City court on December 9th, they could end up spending a year in jail. The comic activist, whose real name is […]