Bloggers of the Cyber Souk

The blogosphere of the Middle East is relatively small in size and exists in an enviroment of stated-controlled media and autocratic government. Can bloggers provide a viable channel for political activism, cultural alternatives and meaningful dissent? Will self-preservation require crippling self-censorship? Find out Monday (February 4, 200 10:15  AM — Noon at “The Battle for Cyberspace: Blogging and Dissidence in the Middle East” at AEI.

Speakers:

 Tony Badran is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and contributes to the FDD blog.  His blog Across the Bay reports and comments on political developments in Lebanon and Syria, and he edits the Syria Opposition Portal.

Hassan Mneimneh, executive director of the Iraq Foundation, is also director of documentation projects for the Baghdad-based Iraq Memory Foundation, which documents atrocities of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Previously, he was co-directed the Iraq Research and Documentation Project at Harvard. He is a regular contributor to the London-based Arabic newspaper al-Hayat.

Michael Rubin, resident scholar at AEI, does research in Arab democracy, Kurdish society, and the domestic politics of Iran, Iraq, and Turkey. He was a political adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad (2003 to 2004) and a staff advisor for Iran and Iraq in the Office of the Secretary of Defense during 2002-2004. He is currently the editor of the Middle East Quarterly. He blogs at The Corner on National Review Online.

Arash Sigarchi is a freelance journalist and blogger born in northern Iran.  He was editor-in-chief of the Iranian daily Gilan Emrooz (Gilan Today) from 2000 until January 2005, when he was imprisoned by Iranian security forces and sentenced to fourteen years in prison for publishing censored material in the paper and on his blog. He was granted a medical furlough from prison in January 2007. Mr. Sigarchi received the 2007 Hellman/Hammett grant, awarded by Human Rights Watch to writers who have been victims of political persecution.

Location:
Wohlstetter Conference Center, Twelfth Floor
American Enterprise Institute
1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036
Directions here.

More Information and online registration here.

Questions: Jeff Azarva
Phone: 202-862-5926
JAzarva@aei.org

Image (from a 19th Century poster) by Mike Licht.

Get it here. Attribution: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

 

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