Careful What You Tweet For

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Gulf News today carries a roundup of recent cases of bloggers and tweeters in trouble around the Gulf and it's an extensive and growing list.

Flagged as being 'with inputs from AFP', 60% of the story is lifted directly from an AFP file, (the rest being made uo of this report from Habib Touma, which is the only bit available online) but we mustn't cavil, must we?

Tweets aren't a joking matter anymore - imagine facing this one in court: "undermining the values and traditions of Bahrain's society towards the King on Twitter". The six Bahraini 'tweeters' who did have just been sentenced a year in prison for 'misusing the right of free expression'.

It's as neat an illustration of the conundrum posed by social media in the Middle East as you're likely to get. Here we all are in possession of these powerful and far-reaching technologies that support widely sharing information and opinion and when we use them we're suddenly very far above the parapet indeed.

All this freedom of expression stuff suffers from the problem that it is, of course, that it's an absolute. You're either free to express or not, surely? But then we also apply 'filters' to that absolute in the West (whilst being all to ready to be scandalised by the hypocrisy of societies that don't allow total freedom of expression) - incitement, hate speech, holocaust denial and a number of other things our society deems to be unacceptable.

We also saw how fragile our freedoms are when British Prime Minister David Cameron, faced with lawless rioting across the country organised via Facebook and Twitter made it clear he would favour 'switching the Internet off'. That's the kind of thing despots do, isn't it?

The trouble is, of course, that government is government the world over - there's that lovely definition of democracy - "Say what you like, do what you're told." which works well as long as when you say what you like it doesn't have the benefit of a platform open to every man and with enormous power to allow messages to be shared and reach audiences far wider than are possible with 'traditional media'. Let's not forget, there are now over double the number of users of Facebook Arabic in the Middle East and North Africa than there are newspapers sold every day (in English, Arabic and French combined) in the region. That's Arabic alone - most users in the region still prefer the English interface, whatever language they are posting in.

It doesn't take insulting a leader or inciting religious hatred to get into trouble with the law on Twitter - you can just break any old law that would have applied in the 'analogue world' - for instance, a lady was fined Dhs 1,000 in Dubai earlier this week for calling an Egyptian gentleman 'stupid'. The law in the UAE does take the issue of personal respect very seriously indeed - it's not something limited to the rulers alone. So, logically, calling someone stupid on Twitter could potentially open you up to a Dhs 1,000 fine.

It's a reminder - whether you're going to put your life on the line for something you believe in or whether you're just sounding off. The law is peering over your shoulder - and those little 140 character blipverts are subject to its full might and weight...

Britpop

Fly to Bahrain. Foggy morning. Board plane bang on time, much to the expressed surprise of several pleased passengers. I think we’d all expected delays, the fog was pretty bad, so it was impressive indeed to be boarding. Get on board. Captain’s a right joker and announces that we’re looking at sitting on the tarmac for a two-hour delay. Haha. Except, as Jarvis Cocker tells us, I don’t see anyone else laughing around here.

It could be worse. I remember reading about a China Airways flight where the landing gear broke on takeoff, necessitating a three-hour flight in circles to burn fuel before the ‘plane crash landed. You can imagine the conversation being a tad stilted among the passengers. At least we’re waiting two hours to take off safely!

Anyway. We’re off now. An hour’s drive to the airport, two to check in, two on the tarmac and one in the air. It’s taken me almost a whole working day just to get to the start of my working day. I fly back again tonight: an 18 hour day in all.

Blur were right. Modern life is rubbish.

Bar

It’s smoky. There’s an old Khaleeji guy in the bar and he’s pissed, throwing back Heineken like the world’s about to end. He’s calling out to people, throwing lines of Arabic-laced Anglo-gibberish to anyone who comes into his orbit. I tell the barman that there’s no way the guy is flying, but he just laughs at me and tells me the chap comes every week and walks straight when he leaves.

The Asian kid next to me is dressed like he owns Facebook: jeans and Kenzo jacket. He’s drinking Corona, smoking a fag and jerking spastically as he plays with his hand-held games console, the smoke forces him to squint as he plays, moving his head to one side but still jerking his hands in response to the fast-moving LCD.

It’s dark, oddly ‘70s, seedy, all browns and beiges: a Bisto ‘aaahhh’ of grey smoke curling through the air.

The call to prayer sounds over the tannoy, but for Prince it’s still 1999. The Khaleeji guy is grinning like a maniac: “Brinze! Brinze! Kuweiss!” he calls out to his reluctant audience of Keralite and Sudani guys.

The South Africans are talking about piling systems.

I love the bar at Bahrain International Airport.