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Lisa Mullins: Our next story is also about a military government. This one is in power now in Egypt. The country’s interim military council is becoming increasingly hostile to descent. Yesterday, a prominent Egyptian blogger and activist was detained by military court. Alaa Abd El Fattah is accused of inciting violence in connection with deadly clashes between Coptic Christians and the military. Fattah’s mother is Laila Soueif. She’s also an activist. She tells us that there’s no truth to the accusation that her son incited violence.

Laila Soueif: There is absolutely no truth to those charges. My son only joined these protests after the violence had erupted and after people had been killed, because he realized it would be a very serious situation of Coptic or Christian Egyptians only were in the demonstration. And my view is the violence was a product of the decision of the military authorities to try and breakup the protests by force.

Mullins: Why do you believe your son, despite of everything you’re saying there, why do you believe your son is in jail right now?

Soueif: Because he wrote very strongly against the supreme military council and because the military is trying to find scapegoats. The military is not wrong to admit that they were wrong; they insisted there were insidious elements in the demonstrations and it was easy to suggest the elements caused the violence. At first we seem to be leaning toward claiming these insidious elements were Islamists, and then when this didn’t work the next choice was the revolutionary youth, secular revolutionary youth who were there at the demonstrations actually because they were supporting the course of the Coptic Christians.

Mullins: I wonder you know, your son is a quite prominent blogger and activist in Egypt. You have a history of activism yourself, but I wonder when he was going online, as outspoken as he is, if you felt the need to caution him at all, despite the fact that there is a new regime in power?

Soueif: Well, I did caution him in the sense that it was very clear what the consequences of what he was doing could be, but it was also a clear choice, cautioning him in the sense of making his choices clear, we do that. Cautioning him in the sense of telling him don’t do that because you might get arrested, well, we don’t do that. I mean this revolution still has a long way to go.

Mullins: Laila Soueif, thank you very much.

Soueif: You’re welcome.

Mullins: Laila Soueif is a leading activist in Egypt. Her son is a blogger now in custody. This is PRI.

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@wraillantclark tweet on 'Mabus' case

Anchor Lisa Mullins speaks with science blogger, William Raillant-Clark in Montreal about the case of alleged Twitter spammer, Dennis Markuze, aka “Mabus”. Markuze was arrested this week and charged with making death threats to scientists, including Raillant-Clark.

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Lisa Mullins: A Canadian man appeared in a Montreal court today.  He’s charged with two counts of making death threats.  The man’s name is Dennis Markuze, but he uses the name Mabus online.  And it’s online where he’s accused of having threatened the lives of certain science writers for years now.  Markuze is a Christian and atheists, especially scientists rub him the wrong way. There’ve been plenty of formal complaints about these threats, but the Montreal police did not act on them until a science blogger, William Raillant-Clark, wrote about the case.  He learned about the death threats in the course of his work.

William Raillant-Clark: I monitor Twitter and other social media to know what science journalists are interested in.  And I discovered that rather than talking about research they were talking about threats that they’d been receiving.

Mullins: So this came to your attention and you took some action last week.  What did you do?

Raillant-Clark: I wrote a blog article because I was very angry with the Montreal police that they had not acted on complaints that they’d received from these people mostly in the US.  And following the publication of that blog article I myself received a threat.  As a Montrealer being threatened by somebody else in Montreal I took the complaint to the police department and it was pretty rapidly acted upon with the help of some pressures from the traditional media.

Mullins: I want to talk about that pressure, but what was the threat that you received and how did you get it?

Raillant-Clark: The threat came to my personal email account which means that he had to look up my contact details.  And it was a long, rambling, crazy kind of text that really didn’t make any sense, but there were really nasty snippets throughout it.  For example, we’re gonna come and cut your head off; die atheist, die; and you know, just a lot of really psychotic ranting.

Mullins: How do you know that the person who is appearing in court today is the same person who wrote those threats to you?

Raillant-Clark: Some of the people that he has been attacking are extremely intelligent.  And some of them are even involved directly in computer security.  By firstly looking at the technical aspect, but also by looking at the content of the messages he was sending, it was pretty easy to line up.  And in fact, when he came to a conference here in Montreal in October, when he physically attended, people were able to recognize him and even take a photo of him.

Mullins: There was also the involvement of someone online from San Francisco, so this kind of crossed the border in terms of what you guys were doing, these investigators.  What happened there?

Raillant-Clark: It all kind of happened at about the same time.  When I went down to the police department to file my complaint, at about the same time a man in San Francisco organized an online petition asking the police to take this issue seriously.  And the fact that that petition received 5,000 signatures within 48 hours demonstrates in my opinion quite aptly just how many people had been targeted by this guy and just how much frustration there was by the situation.

Mullins: So, you credit that kind of pressure from social media with prompting police to act?

Raillant-Clark: I think there’s a number of factors involved, and I think this case demonstrates quite well the difficulties police have responding to this kind of situation.  When I first went to file my complaint you know, the response from the officer who took it was that if I went looking for trouble on the internet that I was sure to find it, and that he was very busy and the file might not be looked at for one, two, or even three months.  So, I definitely think the social media side of it, the petition in particular, really helped in making sure my formal complaint was treated promptly and quickly.

Mullins: All right, William Raillant-Clark, public information officer at the University of Montreal, where he blogs about science matters.  Thanks, William.

Raillant-Clark: Thank you.

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One – Amina Abdullah Arraf – had drawn thousands of followers writing as the “Gay Girl in Damascus “.

But Monday there was a shock for her supporters. The Gay Girl in Damascus, it turns out, is really a straight American man living in Scotland.

Arraf’s online tales of life in a nation in revolt, of her attempts at lesbian romance inside a repressive regime made compelling reading.
But she is actually a he. Meet Tom MacMaster, an American studying at university in Edinburgh.

“It was a fiction, but the facts that I was presenting about Syria, about Islam about the Middle East about all of these things are true. And it was just getting people to listen to them and not pay attention to, you know, the man behind the curtain,” he said.

MacMaster actually created what he calls the “character” of Arraf several years ago, but only began blogging as her in February. Now, other lesbian, gay, bisexual and trasngerered – or LGBT Syrians say they feel betrayed. Danny writes his own blog from Syria under a pseudonym.

“He actually caused so much harm with this, what he called the harmless blog of his because firstly he pushed the LGBT community in a Middle Eastern country where homosexuality is a sin into a political game that the LGBT community is too weak, far too weak to be able to handle,” Danny said.

Then there are the people MacMaster managed to hurt in a far more personal way.

Jelena Lucic only recently discovered that MacMaster had appropriated her photograph as the face of his fictitious character.

“It puts me in serious danger because obviously we are talking about Syria, which is lots of serious things going on at the moment and my face being in front of the blog or any kind of page has been very distressing,” Lucic said.

Lucic is a Croatian woman living in London. And she’s not just worried about her own safety.

“What gave him the right to use my picture to represent Amina or anybody else?” she asked. “This is a breach of my privacy. It raises so many questions . It was upsetting for so many people who genuinely supported the cause. He completely ruined the cause. This is now a joke.”

Writing as Arraf, MacMaster also developed several strong online relationships – including one Canadian woman who believed they were in a relationship.

A blogger living in Israel named Elizabeth was also fooled.

“I corresponded a few times over Facebook with who I thought was Amina and seemed like a very lovely and funny and nice person. I thought that I was talking to a real person and when I read the blog about the kidnapping I was terrified,” Elizabeth said.

It was that fake kidnapping, announced on the blog last week by Arraf’s fake cousin, that fuelled suspicions. Her story began to unravel as U.S. officials said they had no record of her, even though she clamed to be a dual Syrian-American citizen.

MacMaster has spent the day attempting explanations and issuing apologies. He has variously admitted to naivete, vanity and insensitivity in interviews – now he’s wishing for one thing.

“People should stop focussing on the hoaxer, and really be focussing on the most important people who are the real people suffering in Syria, throughout the Middle East, where the concern really needs to be,” MacMaster said.

After criticizing media outlets for their coverage of the region, MacMaster has now admitted to lying and deception.
Far from aiding the cause of activists in Syria, he appears to have handed the government there a chance to question the integrity of anyone who speaks out against it.

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Lisa Mullins: Thailand is another Asian country that’s been hit by political unrest recently. The country is a constitutional monarchy, but one in which it’s forbidden to speak ill of the King. In recent years the number of people accused of insulting the monarchy has risen considerably. The latest is a Thai-American man; his name is Joe Gordon and he was jailed this week. Reporter Irwin Loy is in Bangkok where he’s been following this case.

Irwin Loy: What we know so far is that he was arrested for posting a link to a controversial biography of the Thai King, and translating an article that was seen as being offensive to the monarchy. It should be noted that that link was apparently four years old according to local media reports.

Mullins: And the book that you mentioned is called ‘The King never smiles’. What’s this book about?

Loy: Well, this is a book that’s been critical of the monarchy here. Under the Thai criminal code, it’s a severe offense to even insult or defame the King; and this is taken extremely loosely here. Another aspect is that it makes it illegal to post comments that even insult the monarchy online as well. I think what’s clear is that over the last five years or so there’s been a huge increase in the number of these types of cases.

Mullins: Can we say that these are based on politics, these charges being filed, because we know that Thailand is going to be having a parliamentary election on July 3rd?

Loy: That’s the claim from people who support the political opposition here. You may recall a year ago there was the Red Shirt movement. They opposed the current government and they staged massive protests that really rocked this country. Now, the Red Shirts have been in charge under this law. However, the accusation has been leveled against a wide range of people. This month a prominent historian was charged with insulting the monarchy. Journalists have also faced accusations on this charge as well.

Mullins: Okay. So academics are being charged, journalists are charged, as you say, some political opponents have been charged in the past, but the law itself seems to be so outmoded especially for a place where the King is no longer an absolute ruler. So, why is the law there?

Loy: Well, it’s a reflection of how well regarded the King is in some respects. I mean he’s almost revered here.

Mullins: Irwin, is there any indication that most Thais support these laws?

Loy: It’s hard to say. I think what’s clear is that there’s an increasingly vocal debate about whether these laws are properly used or not. I think it’s fair to say here that many people aren’t exactly sure what’s fair game and what’s not. For example, is it illegal to insult the King? Obviously that, but how would discussing views on the future of the monarchy? There have been instances in which people have been arrested for that. So I think the general population isn’t quite sure how far they can go with this law and you have this sense of a self-censoring phenomenon where people just don’t want to broach the subject.

Mullins: That’s reporter Irwin Loy in Bangkok, Thailand. Thai-American Joe Gordon is reportedly being held in a Bangkok prison on charges that include rioting, inciting political unrest and violating Thailand’s computer crimes act.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World, the co-production of the BBC World Service PRI and WGBH, Boston. President Obama plans to deliver a major speech on the Middle East tomorrow. The speech will partly be a response to the extraordinary events of the past few months in the region. Popular uprisings in various Arab countries have toppled some long-time rulers and led others to crack-down hard on the protesters.  The last time Obama made a major address on the Middle East, he delivered it from Cairo. And Egypt will figure prominently in tomorrow’s speech according to US officials. Its successful revolution has inspired protesters from Libya to Bahrain to Syria, but there are problems in the New Egypt too. There have been deadly clashes between Muslims and Christians. And earlier this week there were clashes between Egyptian Security Forces and protesters outside the Israeli Embassy in Cairo. The clash has highlighted tensions within Egypt about relations with Israel. Journalist, blogger and activist Gigi Ibrahim was at those protests and was in Tahrir Square today. She says the turmoil at home is more on the minds of Egyptians than anything President Obama might say tomorrow.

Gigi Ibrahim: Honestly I think it’s irregardless of what President Obama would say is irrelevant to the Egyptian future and building democracy from the bottom up, I think we are so hung up on what’s happening right now in Egypt. There is about a 160 Eastern protesters have got arrested and now detained by the Egyptian Army and facing military trial tomorrow morning. So, I am more concerned about them and the fact that I was there getting shot at with tear-gas with live ammo, some people next to me dropped from live ammunition through their heads, I mean, this is shot by the Egyptian Army. So it’s definitely — the situation in Egypt is making me worry about this transitional period and the Army actions towards civilians. And you know we’re building political parties, we have parliamentary elections coming up so the revolution has just started for us and now we’re more concerned especially myself like, I’m more concerned about that than what President Obama will say.

Werman: Are you saying that US doesn’t even have a role in Mid East policy right now?

Ibrahim: The US role have — has not positively effecting the area but negatively in the sense of it has backed up bits and pieces and now the people are rising to take ownership of their Statehood and of the future and building democracies from the bottom-up.

Werman: You know we hear all these reports about rising crime in Egypt and escalating tensions between Muslims and cops. Aren’t the fears of escalating chaos in Egypt legitimate?

Ibrahim: The chaos has been there since the regime. And the sectarian issue didn’t just originate post the revolution. This is a sensitive issue that’s now counter revolution is playing on. Some say who were involved could have been initiated by Islamic fanatics that are now represented even of the Muslim brother hood, these are radical groups that are fanatic and the thugs have played on in it too. And these people, who have been arrested have — are seizing you know civilian normal courts, while activists protesting peacefully. And whether it be in the Tahrir Square or the Israeli Embassy or a different square [xx] are sent in for military courts. So really there is the people the — who started this revolution, who believe in this revolution are focusing on fighting that and exposing the army’s action against the civilians and the people of the revolution, because they contradicts everything they’ve been saying about how they are, the, you know, the guarantee of the revolution and who are going to oversee and protect it and so on, when in fact they are doing the extreme opposite.

Werman: Egyptian journalist, blogger and social activist Gigi Ibrahim, thanks very much for your time.

Ibrahim: Thank you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Sanchez Yoani Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

There are many adjectives to describe Cuba. “Wired” is not one of them. As of 2009, only about 12 percent of the island’s population of 11 million had any access to the Internet. That’s because Cuba’s government wants to control the message.

So it comes as some annoyance to Cuban officials that one of the few independent bloggers in its midst, Yoani Sanchez, has gained an international following. And now a book of her blog entries, “Havana Real,” has just been published in the United States.

Yoani Sanchez did not intend to be a rebel. She started blogging as a form of therapy, a way to deal with the frustrations of daily life in Cuba: the long lines, the ever-diminishing rations, her obsession with the food she cannot have, and the constant challenge of keeping ancient appliances working.

Sanchez says she did not start her blog as an act of defiance. “My blog is chronicle of daily life and reality,” she said. “And in Cuba the reality is profoundly defiant, very much in opposition to the official truth put out by the government.”

That official truth includes government-choreographed parades and demonstrations every May Day or on the anniversary of Cuban victories like the failed US Bay of Pigs invasion. Then there’s the predictable government-scripted newscasts trumpeting Cuba’s athletes or boasting a bumper potato crop.

Generation Y

The name of Sanchez’ blog is Generation Y, for people with names that begin with the letter Y, like her first name. It’s common among Cubans born around the same time Sanchez was in 1975. Her generation spent their adolescence in late 1980s and 1990s, during the so-called “Special Period,” which was hardly special. Those were the very lean years following the collapse of the Soviet Union when Cuba was left on its own. Everything was scarce. Sanchez remembers nothing available in the Cuban peso stores, constant low-grade hunger pangs, and being sent from Havana to a rural schools to help grow crops.

And then there was the voice, those five- and six-hour-long televised speeches of the only leader she’s ever known her whole life: the unelected Fidel Castro.

By 2002, Yoani had had enough. Like thousands of other Cubans before her, she decided to leave. The decision came after a particular incident.

“It was Fidel Castro’s birthday and when I turned on the radio in the morning, the voice said, ‘Today is the birthday of the nation.’ And that day I decided I didn’t want to keep living in a country where they confuse the nation with one man, the country with an ideology and our identity with a political party.”

Yoani spent two years in Switzerland but being away from family was too difficult. She returned in 2004.

“My friends still think I was crazy to come back,” she said. “But life has shown me I was right. I wanted to come back, but not to the same condition of silence and of wearing a mask. I wanted to come back to speak out and that is what I am doing, even if I have to pay the consequences of doing that.”

Consequences

The consequences have been harsh. Her phone is tapped, her friends harassed, her teenage son taunted. Plain-clothes Cuban security police are stationed outside her apartment at all times and follow her wherever she goes.

One day Yoani decided to turn the tables. She started following them. She walked right up to them and took photos — which are on her blog — and asked them questions. One said, “Are you crazy?” Another time, she was arrested, beaten and thrown in jail. She recorded the whole thing on her cell phone and that’s on her blog, too.

But Yoani says it’s all worth it because what started out four years ago as one Cuban citizen expressing her views has turned into a community, which she helped train. “We are a diverse, plural movement of alternative Cuban bloggers with a range of voices.” She says they’re not a political party and that in fact they’re all quite different from one another. “But we have something in common and that is the desire to express our voices,” she said.

Yoani continues to express her own voice — in any way she can. She makes a living by writing for foreign publications. She then uses the hard currency to pay for time on the Internet at tourist hotels where she emails her blog entries to the Canadians who manage it.

Asked what she’d tell Raul Castro to change if she ever got a meeting with him, she would tell him to de-criminalize differences of opinion. “When we stop punishing free expression in this country, everything will start to change.”

Yoani Sanchez is now a cause celeb in civil society and digital media circles. Jimmy Carter met with her recently in Havana — at his request. And she’s regularly invited overseas to accept awards and speak at conferences. But Cuban authorities have turned down her requests to travel — 14 times. She’s got a 15th one pending — to visit the US to promote her book but she’s not optimistic.

Read More

• The Year of Yoani
• Yoani Sanchez: My Last Bit of Faith
• Yoani Sanchez: A gangland style kidnapping
• Yoani Sanchez: Goodbye to Rationing
• What Jimmy Carter can’t change in Cuba

An excerpt from the Yoani Sanchez’s book “Havana Real”

Given a ration card at birth, and entering adolescence during Cuba’s “Special Period,” my thoughts are obsessed with food. I have to control myself not to let my desires run away with me, or to show the naked hunger that I see in the faces of my friends.
I look at them heading to the market with their plastic shopping bags, often returning with them just as empty as when they left. I, too, have a shopping bag, but I keep it folded in my pocket, so I don’t look like I’ve been devoured by the machinery of the waiting line, the search for food, the gossip about whether the chicken has arrived at the market. . . In the end, I have the same obsession with getting food, but I try not to show it too much.

New status symbol

I live equidistant from two agricultural markets. In one, the sellers are either farmers or members of a cooperative farm, the other is run by the Youth Labor Army. In the first, there is nearly every fruit, vegetable, and other food, even pork, that one could want. In the second, the State market, there is rarely more than sweet potatoes, peppers, onions and green papayas. When there is some kind of meat, lines are longer. But the fundamental difference between the two markets is not variety but price—so much so that my neighbors call the farmers’ market “the market of the rich” and the Youth Labor Army’s market the “market of the poor.”
The truth is, to serve a fairly balanced meal you have to go to both. First, you must inspect the plentiful stands in the large “market of the rich.” Then you must review the capricious offerings and dubious quality in the “market of the poor.”
Sometimes, overcome by desire and nostalgia, I buy a pineapple in the “market of the rich.” But I take care to bring a cloth shopping bag to hide this queen of the fruits, this obscene symbol of status, from the jealous glances of others.

When I watch TV. . .

This week we are having anti-television therapy in our house. We started gradually, and now we only turn on the “smug little fatty” without the volume. This does something extremely interesting. Before our eyes pass images so predictable that our imaginations add voices and sound. If there is a seeded field, inside my head I hear a well-known commentator announcing over-achievement in potato production. If we see images of people in white coats, my mind immediately hears the speech about Cuban doctors who offer their services in Bolivia or Venezuela.
When watching on mute, however, I never hear anything resembling actual conversations that I hear daily on the street. Our small screen shows us “what should have been” or, even worse, “what we must think we are.” So, the commentator in all of us never says, “Prices are sky-high,” “In my polyclinic we have only seventeen doctors because all the rest have left on a mission,” “If you don’t steal from your workplace you can’t live,” or “Where are the damned potatoes that never come?”
What I see on television bears so little resemblance to my life that I have come to think it is my life that isn’t real; that the sad faces on the street are actors who deserve Oscars; that the hundreds of problems I navigate just to feed myself, get transportation, and simply exist are only lines in a dramatic script; that the truth, so adamant are they about it, must be what they tell me on the National Television News and the Roundtable talk show.

The gift of invisibility

For years I boasted that I could become “invisible.” Because at any moment, I could immediately go undetected and escape from complicated situations. Wrapped in this “Harry Potter” cloak, I eluded the Union of Communist Youth, because—incredibly enough considering Cuba’s ideological extremism in the 1980s—no one asked me if I’d like to join.
I was also invisible to any position of responsibility that required an unblemished record. Thus, I avoided, with hardly anyone noticing, until today, the almost obligatory enrollment in the Federation of Cuban Women; I simply played the old trick of having an identity card for one address but living in another. I also got around membership in a union. And I even managed to sidestep the “University is for Revolutionaries,” as I was lucky enough to study at the School of Letters, during a time of relaxed bureaucracy due to the severe conditions of the Special Period.1
However, the hiding trick no longer works. So, I have “pointed myself out” with an act of extreme exhibitionism: Writing this blog. My friend told me the golden rule he learned in a conversation with “the boys of the apparatus.” He said: “You can sign your own name to anything you think and write, but you aren’t allowed to publish any of those things, particularly if you have signed them.”
So, inspired by my friend’s story, I got a little carried away and put my picture up on this blog. Although I appreciate the advice of those who have written in asking me to please use a pseudonym and to take my photo down from the site, I should tell you all that this is part of my “anti-invisibility” therapy.

A poster reading 'Free Slim: Freedom Advocate Detained in Tunisia' in Tunisia after Amamou's arrest (Photo: Hasan Almustafa)

• Tunisian dissident blogger takes job as minister

Here’s a question for you: do you think the Internet should win the Nobel Peace Prize? Well, tomorrow you will find out if those prize-giving folks in Sweden Norway think so. That’s right, the Internet has been nominated for the Peace Prize (Don’t tell the trolls and other haterz out there know about this…). The effort is being backed by a group called The Internet for Peace, who say they’ve realized that “the Internet is much more than a network of computers. It is an endless web of people.” This is true. But I guess we should also point out that currently only 1/6 of the world’s population is connected to that web. That said, the BBC’s Jonathan Fildes and I will tackle this as part of our monthly round-up of top global tech stories.

The rest of the podcast is taken up with three very interesting stories that deal with Iran. First, the Stuxnet computer worm, which has suddenly exploded onto the scene. You can start with Jonathan’s story for the BBC, and a good FAQ on Stuxnet from anti-virus firm F-Secure. To go a bit deeper, try Symantec’s Stuxnet blog.

Next, we’ll talk about a piece of software called Haystack, which was heralded by its makers, the press (including this podcast) and the U.S. State Department as a way for Iranians to see and say what they wanted on the web, without the authorities being able to identify them. Turns out that maybe Haystack wasn’t so safe after all. We’ll talk about what other tools might be available, and about the difficulties of creating this kind of software in the first place.

And our third story is more on the 19.5 year prison sentence handed down by the Iranian authorities to Canadian-Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan. For thorough and ongoing coverage, I suggest you go over to my friend Cyrus Farivar’s blog.

Remember, you can follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Well, after all that, what do you think? Do the Interwebs deserve a Nobel Prize? Here’s the elevator pitch:

At right is Hossein Derakhshan, also known by his online name, Hoder. According to sources inside Iran, Hoder might very well be facing the death penalty. He was arrested in Tehran back in November of 2008. The charges, according to Iranian radio, were “cooperation with enemy states, propaganda against the Islamic regime, promoting anti-Revolutionary groups, insulting sanctities, launching and managing vulgar and obscene sites.”

Hoder’s trial finished over the summer. We’ve gotten reports this week that the prosecutor has asked for the death penalty. Here at WTP, we’ve followed Hoder’s story from just about the beginning. He’s widely credited with being the person who created that tools that make it possible to blog in the Persian language. When I first talked to him, he was living in Canada and was convinced that blogging could help undermine the Iranian regime. He became a Canadian citizen. At some point, though, the tone of his writing changed, and he actually became a supporter of Iran. Then, he decided to return to the country. Curt Hopkins at Read Write Web has a good write-up on Hoder’s back-story. Learn more in this week’s podcast.

Also in this episode, we have an update on Google’s woes with Street View in Germany, and we’ll also hear about some whales that are getting high-tech help in the Mediterranean.

We’ll also talk about a Belgian start-up called United Pepper that’s trying to create a line of greener, fairer electronics products, things like webcams made from recycled materials, and put together in Vietnamese factories that reportedly adhere to fair trade guidelines. In the course of the discussion, we hear from Traidcraft, a group that evaluates supply chains based on fair trade principles. We’ll also talk to Greenpeace, who regularly creates a Guide to Greener Electronics.

We’ll also move the discussion of “green electronics” over to the United States, and have a chat with Sarah O’Brien, of the Green Electronics Council. Sarah’s answering your questions over in our World Science Forum for the next couple of weeks, so be sure to stop by and leave your questions or comments!

Remember, you can follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
(Photo: Hessam M. Armandehi)

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KATY CLARK: I’m Katy Clark and this is The World. A blogger named Hossein Derakhshan was arrested in Tehran on November 1, 2008. He’d only been in Iran for two months. Derakhshan is a dual citizen of Iran and Canada. While in Toronto in 2001 he created one of the first Persian-language blogs and became a pioneer of the Iranian blogoshpere. It’s been a year since his arrest but details of his case are still murky. Iran has said little about it and his family has largely kept silent. Until now. Cyrus Farivar reports.

CYRUS FARIVAR: Last week Hossein’s father, Hassan Derakhshan, published an open letter in the Iranian reformist newspaper Salaam. It was addressed to the new head of the Iranian judiciary system. In it he said the family has only had just two short meetings with Hossein and they have no information about his legal situation. And that’s why a year after his brother’s arrest Hamed Derakhshan began speaking to the press. In an interview with The World Hamed Derakhshan told me he can’t afford to be silent anymore.

HAMED DERAKHSHAN: They have told us that it would be better for him. His case would be processed faster if there is no unwanted attention to it. But now I feel that you know I’ve got to do something about it.

FARIVAR: Hamed Derakhshan says his family still has very little information about his brother. They don’t even know what prison he’s being held in.

HAMED DERAKHSHAN: We don’t officially know what his charges are. There were rumors in the beginning that his charges are insulting religious figures. And then we heard about spying for Israel. But officially, now we don’t know what they are.

FARIVAR: With no real information out there, rumors have rampant in the Persian-language internet. Some even speculate that Hossein Derakhshan was collaborating with the Iranian government and perhaps spying for them. His brother Hamed Derakhshan denies these charges and says that the family continues to press authorities for more information. The Iranian government isn’t speaking about Hossein Derakhshan’s case and the Canadian government isn’t saying much either. Canadian officials declined to speak on tape about the case. But Rodney Moore, of the Office of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada, sent an e-mail saying Canada continues to press for access to Hossein Derakhshan under international law. He added that Derakhshan’s dual nationality makes things complicated for them. And there are other complications in the case. Before he left for Iran in 2008, Derakhshan said something a little surprising to family and friends. One of them was Pedram Moallemian, an Iranian-Canadian living in Los Angeles.

PEDRAM MOALLEMIAN: He was convinced that the Iranian government and the judiciary system is a fair and adequate one and in case he was arrested he would be fairly treated and represented and he made it very clear that if he is arrested he does not want a big noise made about it outside.

FARIVAR: In his early years as a blogger Derakhshan leaned more towards Iran’s Reformist camp. He initially wanted to build bridges between Iran and the West. He even traveled to Israel on his Canadian passport in 2006. But Derakhshan began to change his political views. Derakhshan ultimately began supporting Iran’s hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and his policies says Omid Memarian, an Iran analyst with Human Rights Watch in San Francisco.

OMID MEMARIAN: I think Hossein was smarter than that to become a fan of Ahmadinejad. But he was. He was really into the new government and defending their policies and he was after everybody. Like every single person who was into defending human rights issues, like Shirin Ebadi, a Nobel laureate.

FARIVAR: Derakhshan didn’t just go after Shirin Ebadi. He wrote inflammatory things in his blog about anyone he didn’t agree with. He even accused Memarian of converting to Christianity which is forbidden under Islamic law. In 2007, Derakhshan got slapped with a $2 million libel case. But Memarian says none of this should stop human rights advocates from trying to defend Derakhshan’s rights.

MEMARIAN: Hossein’s case is a human rights case. You know, no matter what Hossein did and no matter what damages he created for people, he has been disappeared for almost a year. He’s trapped and he needs help.

FARIVAR: At this point Derakhshan doesn’t have many friends left who are publicly willing to fight for him. For now it appears Derakhshan will likely continue to remain in an unknown Tehran prison. For The World I’m Cyrus Farivar.

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