Jailed for a fake Facebook profile

Fouad Mourtada was arrested in Casablanca for "villainous practices", for creating a facebook profile for Prince Moulay Rachid, the younger brother of the Moroccan King. Needless to say, this is the first such case anywhere. It must be devastating for something as simple and innocent as creating a fake Facebook profile. His family, interviewed on BBC Arabic, say that Fouad created the profile to impress the opposite sex, and has not sent or received any messages on the account.

Fouad is currently awaiting trial, and he could be facing anywhere between eight months or five years in jail: for a fake facebook profile!

The Moroccan government exercises heavy censorship on the media, specially when it comes to news about the royal family, but they've generally adopted a handsoff approach to bloggers and social networks; this latest incident signals a change.

Spanish cartoon editor fined for damaging the prestige of the crown"...

Spanish cartoons editor of the weekly magazine El Jueves was fined
3000 euros for publishing a cartoon of prince Filipe. The cartoon was funny:

Their offence was to have published a cartoon last July making ribald fun of the heir to the Spanish throne, and of the government's scheme to encourage women to have more babies by giving mothers a special payment for each new birth.

It was a caricature of Prince Filipe having sex with his wife, Princess Letizia, and telling her: "Do you realise that if you get pregnant, it will be the closest thing to work I've done in my life?"

The journalists were charged with "damaging the prestige of the crown"". It raises the issue of selective censorship in Europe, just last year Muslims around the world were protesting the publishing of cartoons insulting their prophet and Europeans (and Westerners) were saying threy were "surprised" that Muslims got angry. A case of double-standard, yet again, perhaps!.

Getting content out of Burma

It's difficult getting content out from Burma, most people in the country don't have access to internet, and even then, the government strictly censors everything (including hotmail, gmail, ... etc).

Burmese activists have been getting out photos, video and eyewitness accounts using mobile phones, blogs, and the good old mailing lists. Also, news organizations like Aljazeera, BBC and Guardian have been using eyewitness accounts and blogs to find content. Here's some of the best sources I came across, it would be useful to use them altogether:

Here is a list of useful Burmese blogs (not all in English):

• http://www.irrawaddy.org/protests/BurmaProtests.php
• http://mizzima.com/Foto-2007/Sep/Index.html
• http://ko-htike.blogspot.com/
• http://moemaka.blogspot.com/

From MSM:

• Guardian's newsblog is well updated - minute by minute - onthe
  
• Aljazeera has a reporter on the ground - filming but can't show his face - brown their youtube channel.
  
• BBC is pulling together eyewitness accounts in text, audio and video. Very informative
  
• Global Voices Burma is aggregating Burmese blogs.
  

In cases like Burma, when the government heavily censors local media and doesn't allow in journalist from outside, newsrooms increasingly rely on the internet - that's good.