The first week of 2006  in the Moroccan blogs · Global Voices
Farah Kinani

2006 is here, so happy  new year from the Moroccan   blogosphere.
After a one month absence , Larbi is back. This blog is definitely the most popular among the Moroccan bloggers and in addition to its critical posts it also offers services to its readers. And I just had to visit Larbi to know the addresses of the Moroccan blogs written in a list regurlarly updated.
In his latest post, Larbi disapproves  (French) the recent declarations of the Moroccan Justice Minister Mohammad Bouzoubaa to set up a follow-up unit in charge of monitoring all press publications. The comments to this post were all surprisingly not surprised of such decision and focused mainly in condemning the Moroccan journalists .
Still in the national events and while I was suspecting a bigger reaction from the Moroccan bloggers to the Tel Quel's sentence, only few blogs mentioned it last week .
One of them, and probably the first one to report the news about the Moroccan Magazine was Bluesman who simply wrote the court punishment in his post while he asked his readers in the comments section to show” fiercer ” support to Tel Quel.
Reactions to Ayman Nour‘s arrest
Meanwhile, Ayman nour's sentence  was more succesful to get the Moroccan bloggers’ attention last week.
Amazigh qualifies the arrest of Nour as  a very bad surprise at the end of 2005 , and he writes in his post intitled “Purelyt Arabica : five-five!” that while Husni Mubarak Has 5 years to govern Egypt, Nour has to spend them in jail.
those dictators don't want to learn the new rules nor want they leave their places to young est and newest mentalities
Amazigh ends his post saying that the only way to have democratic elections in an arab country is to wait for its president to die or to be disgraced by Americans.
Karim has a different opinion concerning the arrest of Ayman Nour, and he says in  The Arab Observers that if Ayman Nour was arrested , it's because the Egyptian government must feel in a position of force that enables it to do this without fearing an internatiol uproar.
In my opinion, this is evidence that Egypt is still being needed as one of Washington's key allies in the war on terror. Thus, in this particular case, we may again conclude that the threat of terrorism has only served to further strengthen a repressive arab regime and western ally, not exactly what the extremists sought.
The Arab observers is one of my favorite blogs and it has the paritcularity to reach a large audience with different interests.The main reason lies behind the different sections that ,Karim and Jallal, authors of the blog offer to their readers.
You have the main page that gives an idea of the recent posts you can reach in one of those sections :Political Islam, Current Events, Moroccan Issues, Miscellaneous Topics and Books.
The post about Ayman Nour is in the Current Events section, and its main subject is actually about Mona El Talhawi  who got herself in trouble after she published a opinion piece in the International Herald Tribune, in which she expressed sharp criticism of the elections in Egypt.
The Arab observers report that Eltahawy was summoned  to a meeting with egyptian officials, during which she was told that her actions are being monitored by the egyptian government.
About Iraq and Palestine
Geronium “screams” in his post intitles “In memory of Fllujan Massacre” his rage against the killing of civilians  that occurred (occurs?) in Fallujah. He says in the introdution of his post:
What can I say ?
Is it hate ? Is it Pain for those persons ? Is it Rage against the americans ? I don't Know. But what am sure about is that there is no words to express this feeling inside my heart. For What ? For Fallujah battle.
I don't want to hate the americans but the truth I say, It's very difficult to love people implicated in mass killing of civilians.
Lili gives the readers of her french blog Etre soi meme a Background to the Israel-Palestine Crisis , and she asks them to read more about this subject since she considers knowing the truth to be a human duty .
Coup de coeur..
I definitely have to visit more Moroccan blogs to come out with a clear vision about the nature of The Moroccan blogging. But, from what I have seen, I can say that 60 per cent of the Moroccan bloggers are more familiar with the journal kind of blogs.
Crucivore is a blog that I  can label as intellectual even if its author doesn't seem to think so ;). Last week, crucivore posted about a book reporting funny real situations. It's called “Laughing just to keep from crying.”
And here's a taste of some of the stories you'll find in the post intitled “real stories.”
A man to his wife:
How come God created you so beautiful and so stupid?
The wife:
God created me beautiful to attract you, and stupid to be attracted by you..
There is also a tendancy to make irony of political or social events the way Anima is doing. Her “serial” about a couple who seems lost while trying to make sens of events around them, has a big audience. And they're right now begging her to keep writing about “Oum al'yal” and “Ab al'yal” since she declared in her latest post that the adventure of the famous couple reached its end….i'm actually begging her too…ahemmm.
That's it for this week. See you next Wednesday, Inshallah.