Quotable
From "The Arab Blogistan," a post by Sandmonkey, a Saudi blogger, on the recent guidelines put forward by "The Official Community of the Saudi Bloggers": The story is always the same. An arab country starts having a blogsphere, and it gets populated by mostly secular or moderate voices from the left, right and center at ...
From "The Arab Blogistan," a post by Sandmonkey, a Saudi blogger, on the recent guidelines put forward by "The Official Community of the Saudi Bloggers":
From "The Arab Blogistan," a post by Sandmonkey, a Saudi blogger, on the recent guidelines put forward by "The Official Community of the Saudi Bloggers":
The story is always the same. An arab country starts having a blogsphere, and it gets populated by mostly secular or moderate voices from the left, right and center at first (To see an example of how we used to be like, check the excellent Jordanian blogsphere . It's how ours used to be like, before so many of us quit). Then, after a while, a new group of bloggers comes along, and the first thing they do is trash the "Old Guard" (That's what one such bloggers in Egypt called us secular bloggers. You would think we were the Mubarak regime or something!) and they start ranting and raving about how there should be rules and restrictions on how the bloggers of said country should, you know, blog.
More from Foreign Policy

Saudi-Iranian Détente Is a Wake-Up Call for America
The peace plan is a big deal—and it’s no accident that China brokered it.

The U.S.-Israel Relationship No Longer Makes Sense
If Israel and its supporters want the country to continue receiving U.S. largesse, they will need to come up with a new narrative.

Putin Is Trapped in the Sunk-Cost Fallacy of War
Moscow is grasping for meaning in a meaningless invasion.

How China’s Saudi-Iran Deal Can Serve U.S. Interests
And why there’s less to Beijing’s diplomatic breakthrough than meets the eye.