Arabisc: The Arabic Bloggers Ken, Media, Anti-Blogging and the World Cup · Global Voices
Haitham Sabbah

Blogging nightmare…
Starting with hot news this week, it looks that the Egyptian blogsphere is going to have more hard time in the near future.
Following Aljazeera's one hour TV documentary (Arabic) about blogging and its role in the political scene in the Egyptian street, one of the oldest, biggest and most read newspapers in Egypt, published a long report about the bloggers. The article was published at besara7a blog and is titled “The Bloggers Declares Revolution on the Internet: A sociological Study on Bloggers and their Blogs” (Arabic).
The alarming news comes from 43arb and Jarelkamar. Tadwen blog sums up the story as following:
Now, that is scary! We can understand the need for “anti-terrorism force”, but “anti-blogging” security office?! Wow!
On the political side…
The “Gaza Beach Tragedy” had a big presence in the Arabic blogsphere. The Palestinian cartoonist, Amal, in her new latest work sums up what is going on, world wide (World Cup 2006) and the tragedy news coming from Palestine on the World Cup opening day:
Playing with the words equivalent to ‘World Cup’ in Arabic (كاس العالم) the cartoon is simply ‘bad-mouthing’ the world (not the World Cup).
Still on “Gaza Beach Tragedy”, a campaign was launched to call the Arabic TV channels, to use the scenes of the tragedy as much and as often as they can.
They wrote a letter and asked readers to send it to AlFajr, Aljazeera and Alarabiya TV’s. The letter reads:
On the sarcastic side…
Surfing the Moroccan blogsphere, I came across a new Arabic term, funny one, but has a strong roots that refers to the rising numbers of unemployment in Morocco and the Arab world.
Heyttism, is the new term. Hamoud explains the roots of the term, he said:
Heyttism!! Added to personal dictionary.
Arabic language and the Internet…
Marwan, from Subzero Blue blog, writes in his Arabic blog about the new Google News service in Arabic. He seems have found something we all have missed for long time. Marwan writes:
تجمع “أخبار غوغل” قصص ومقالات إخبارية من مصادر للأخبار تزيد على 150 مصدر من جميع أنحاء العالم، وترتبها أوتوماتيكياً ووضع أهم وآخر الأخبار في الصدارة. يتم تحديث موضوعات الأخبار كل 15 دقيقة، ولذا فمن المحتمل أن ترى قصصًا إخبارية جديدة في كل مرة تراجع فيها الصفحة.
أظنّ أنّه جيّد جدّاً أنّ غوغل تهتمّ أكثر فأكثر بادخال اللّغة العربيّة في خدماتها مؤخّراً كخدمة البريد الاكتروني و الترجمة و الآن الأخبار.
أتمنّى أن نرى المزيد من الخدمات على الانترنت مستعملة اللّغة العربيّة من غوغل و غيرها، مساعدة في تقوية الحضور العربيّ على الشبكة.
Google news gather the news stories from more than 150 news sources from all around the world, then sort them automatically and puts the hot news on top. The front page is refreshed every 15 minutes, so you might see new stories every time you visit the page.
I think it is a very good move from Google to introduce the Arabic language in its services like E-mails and the translation services and now the news.
I hope to see more online services from Google and others in Arabic, which will strengthen the Arab presence on the Internet.
Not far from the Internet; The Emirate's blogger Ben Kerishan is criticizing what he calls the foolishness and backward mentality of the way things are dealt with in his part of the world. He said:
After giving many examples of material published online and describing how it mock and ridicules the intelligence of our brains, Ben Kerishan concludes:
Very harsh, but maybe true!