Bahraini blogger tortured. Abd El Galil AlSingace, the Bahraini blogger who was arrested in August, has been tortured. He suffered a perforated eardrum after being beaten and is now partially deaf. He has been denied his walking cane, a wheel chair and the medicine he takes for chronic conditions.
AlSingace, who had been arrested before, in 2008, had complained on his blog about the use of torture in Bahrain. I guess the torturers in Bahrain are showing him who’s boss.AlSingace had flown to London before his arrest to speak to the House of Lords about human rights in Bahrain.
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Iran arrests more bloggers. This month Iran arrested several more bloggers. First was Navid Mohebbi, a blogger and activist from the city of Amol. He was beaten severely as he was arrested. in 2008, he was interrogated (and beaten of course) after he tried to organize a celebration of International Women’s Day. No reason has been given for his arrest.
The son of hardline Ayatollah Abolghassem Khazali, Mehdi Khazali was arrested Wednesday for allegedly writing posts critical of the Iranian authorities. Khazali heads up Iran’s Medical Data Bank.
Apple patents censorship. Apple CEO Steve Jobs is notorious for his commitment to sparing you the trauma of pornography. Now he’s really put his shoulder into it.
Apple was awarded a patent for “(s)ystems, devices, and methods are provided for enabling a user to control the content of text-based messages.” Thank goodness the reason for this is parental control. Otherwise, Apple might decide to forbid certain types of speech all on its own. But that’s just silly.
Baidu, the Google of China, takes down 1,000,000 comments per day. Shu Xun, the head of Baidu Tieba, the online community integrated with the Baidu search engine, spoke at a business summit recently. Shu said the online community integrated with the Baidu search property, deletes a 1,000,000 comments every day. One of the Chinese government’s strategies for censoring its people is to make ISPs and other online companies responsible for the breaking of its myriad and shifting rules regarding speech.
Wikileaks’ Julian Assange accuses e-commerce company that dropped him of conspiracy. After being dropped by Moneybooker, the e-commerce company that processes the organizations donations, Assange accused it of collusion in a U.S. government conspiracy to destroy him.
Assange also accused Sweden of collusion in a U.S. government conspiracy to destroy him when they charged him with sexual misconduct and rape. Assange’s plans to release 400,000 documents from the Iraq war have inspired the resignation of a number of Wikileaks members. Wikileaks now shows only a statement saying the site is “undergoing scheduled maintenance.”
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