Category Archives: Voices of Democracy

21May/08

Syria and Tunisia: Enemies of the Web

Freedom and the Internet, Middle East, UN, Voices of Democracy, ,

By Nir Boms
FrontPageMagazine.com | December 15, 2004

Last month, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan announced the creation of a new group to exert control over what has remained a rare bastion of freedom: the Internet.

The group’s forum is the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). Its 40 members, all appointed by Annan, include Cuba, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe and Tunisia. In other words, several of the world’s most repressive regimes will decide on matters of freedom of expression. Pakistan, Russia and Egypt, whose governments heavily censor Internet activity, are group members as well. Their selection for WSIS comes as no surprise, given the UN’s past appointments of Libya to head a human rights committee and Saddam’s Iraq to sit in a disarmament group. Continue reading →

21May/08

Democracy Web

Freedom and the Internet, Middle East, Voices of Democracy, ,

 

August 23rd, 2004

By Nir Boms/Erick Stakelbeck

While the war on terror has left scores of Islamist terrorists worldwide on the run, there is still one place where they – or at least, their message – can find safe refuge: the Internet. 

In the past two weeks alone, a beheading, a graphic terrorist training video and several chilling threats against the West have all been posted on Islamist Web sites. In addition, the FBI announced on Aug. 9 that it was investigating Mazen Mokhtar, an Egyptian-born American citizen, for allegedly operating a radical site that solicited funds and recruited fighters for the Taliban and other jihadist groups. 

Continue reading →

21May/08

A Democratic Middle East?

US and the Middle East, Voices of Democracy, ,

By Nir Boms and Erick Stackelbeck
FrontPageMagazine.com | October 4, 2004

On Oct. 1, over 30 Middle Eastern American groups gathered at the Wardman Park Marriott Hotel in Washington, D.C., to discuss something that is only whispered about in their native lands: freedom.

The Middle Eastern American Convention for Freedom and Democracy, a conference organized by the Washington-based Center for Freedom in the Middle East along with a number of Middle Eastern American pro-democracy groups, had hundreds of participants representing a wide range of countries, ethnicities and religions.

Continue reading →

21May/08

Dawn of Freedom Awaits Sunrise

Islam and Democracy, Voices of Democracy, , ,

by Nir Boms and Aaron Mannes

Tuesday, April 5, 2005 7:33 PM EDT

The DC Examiner

With elections in Iraq and the Palestinian Authority, huge pro-freedom demonstrations in tiny Lebanon and even small pro-democracy demonstrations in Egypt, it appears that freedom’s dawn is finally reaching the Middle East. But democracies require the rule of law and currently the legal systems throughout the region serve as tools of repression rather than guarantors of individual liberty. Continue reading →