At a time when online activism can be risky, as it is credited with -- or blamed for -- fanning the flames of activism sweeping the region, a veteran Syrian blogger has been arrested.

Ahmad Abu Khair was pulled over and arrested early Sunday morning while driving from the coastal town of Banias to Damascus, according to the advocacy group Global Voices and a Facebook group calling for his release (link in Arabic). The charges against him are still unknown, but Khair was enthusiastic in his online support of the ouster of former Tunisian President Zine al Abadine Ben Ali.

In a recent post on his blog titled "Inspired by the revolution" (Arabic link), Khair compared the conditions that led to the uprising in Tunisia with the situation in Syria and other Arab countries, concluding: "Change is possible ... but by revolution!"

But others have said that Khair's comments were not seen as particularly controversial and were echoed by many in the blogosphere.

"All Syrian bloggers praised the revolution and talked generally about why change is important," a source in Syria with knowledge of social media told Babylon & Beyond. "If his blog was the reason" for his arrest, "then this is surely a change of policy: If you support a revolution you'll be detained."

 
A second protester was killed Tuesday when a funeral procession for a protester killed Monday erupted into new clashes with Bahraini police, according to local media.

Fadhel Matrook was one of several thousand supporters who joined the funeral procession for Ali Abdulhadi Mushaima, who was shot and killed Monday amid widespread protests against government abuse. Human rights activists said police moved in on the procession as crowds of mourners were exiting the hospital.

Nabeel Rajab, from the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, and other activists told CNN that Matrook was shot by either pellet guns or birdshot.

A graphic image posted online appeared to show the back of an unidentified protester punctured by many tiny holes similar to wounds inflicted by bird-shot, but the photograph could not be authenticated. Other footage and pictures posted online showed evidence of a violent suppression of the protests in Bahrain, now in their second day.

Egypt's state-owned NileSat satellite company has announced that it will unblock Al Jazeera and Al Jazeera Live, the Doha-based news network announced Wednesday, 10 days after authorities stopped transmission over the channel's coverage of anti-government protests.

The decision comes after Egypt's ambassador to the United Nations, Maged Abdelaziz, told the U.N. Security Council that the government had no effective means of controlling the flow of information.

"Even though when we had some disputes with Al Jazeera, and then they were able to broadcast, they managed to maneuver us and go to get from some other sources," Abdelaziz said, according to the Al Jazeera English live blog.

"The world is a small village, and everybody knows what is happening all over the place," he added.

-- Meris Lutz in Beirut

Screenshot: Al Jazeera and Al Jazeera Live were blocked from NileSat. Credit: Aljazeera.net

The first "post-revolution" satellite channel based in Tunisia was launched Saturday just weeks after a popular uprising forced former President Zine el Abidine ben Ali to flee the country, the London-based pan-Arab daily Al Quds Al Arabi reported.

The new, privately owned station, "Sawt an-Naas" or "Voice of the People," represents a new victory for the protest movement. Many of its journalists are former Tunisian exiles who have only recently been allowed to return to their country, according to the station's cofounder, Mourad Sellami, who also pledged to maintain editorial independence and high professional standards.

"Our channel does not follow a specific political line," Sellami told Al Quds Al Arabi. "We are a channel that aspires to have an independent editorial line and remain open to any Tunisian opinion without any exclusion."

For now, the channel has begun transmitting the Tunisian national anthem as it gets its programming in line, but Sellami said he hopes to begin broadcasting soon. Fostering a local independent press will be vital to ensuring meaningful reform, with the coming elections still hanging in the balance and conflicting reports about the source of ongoing unrest.

The newspaper noted that prior to Ben Ali's departure and the sacking of large parts of his government, all television and radio stations based in Tunisia were either state-owned or private but toed the party line, most notably Nessma TV and Hannibal, which were owned by a relative of Ben Ali's wife.

-- Meris Lutz in Beirut

Authorities in Egypt appear to be stepping up a clampdown on the media as anti-government protests continue. Six reporters from the pan-Arabic satellite news channel Al Jazeera English were reportedly detained temporarily on Monday and had their equipment confiscated by the Egyptian military.

Al Jazeera announced Monday that six of its journalists had been detained and some of its camera equipment seized by the Egyptian military following government attempts to silence the network. The journalists were released shortly thereafter.

Al Jazeera has emerged as the leading network in covering the uprising in Egypt with correspondents in every major Egyptian city reporting in both English and Arabic.

On Sunday, the network reported tht President Hosni Mubarak's government revoked Al Jazeera's accreditation and ordered its Cairo bureau to close. The station has continued to broadcast from Egypt, but its anchors have noted significant restrictions in their journalists' freedom of movement and ability to report.

At 2:11 p.m., Al Jazeera English correspondent Dan Nolan tweeted: "4 soldiers entered room took our camera. We are under military arrest #Egypt #jan25."A few minutes later he tweeted: "unsure if arrested or about to be deported. 6 of us held at army checkpoint outside Hilton hotel."

The unrest may be taking place thousands of miles away, but Chinese Internet censors felt it close enough to disable searches for "Egypt" in its Twitter-like services.

The blocking underscores Beijing’s continued concern over the Internet and its potential to access anti-government information and organize opposition to China’s ruling Communist Party. 

Protests have swept across cities in Egypt with the aim of ousting President Hosni Mubarak. The Egyptian government has since suspended Internet and cellphone service in the country.

China’s 457 million Internet users have been embracing microblogs, which act like Twitter by allowing people to write short posts and provide links instantaneously. Twitter is banned in China and accessible only through special software.

The number of micoblog users is believed to have more than tripled to 100 million last year and has attracted film stars and famous entrepreneurs. China’s leading Internet portals, such as Sohu.com and Sina.com, have been offering the service, which had been thought of as an example of growing free expression in an otherwise tightly controlled corner of China.

Last summer, the services were mysteriously shut down in what was believed to be a warning to the web portals to scrub their sites of politically sensitive topics. At the time, searches for posts about protests in southern China over the demise of Cantonese were disabled.

Chinese media coverage of the Egyptian crisis has been mostly downplayed, with little mention of the underlying causes for the revolt. In international sections, newspapers carried nearly identical reports provided by the state-controlled New China News Agency,  a common practice for politically sensitive issues.

Coverage, both online and in print, focused on the economic repercussions of the situation in Egypt, with the Egyptian pound falling against the dollar on Friday. No mention was made of Egypt’s rising prices or official corruption -- problems with which many Chinese are all too familiar.

Searches on Sina.com for "Egypt" returned a message saying, "According to relevant laws, statues and policies, the search results cannot be displayed." A microblogging site operated by Tencent showed no results.

--David Pierson in Beijing

Photo: People surf the Internet at a Beijing Internet cafe. Credit: Diego Azubel / European Pressphoto Agency

Press advocacy groups have joined politicians and others in condemning Wednesday's attacks on journalists after a national "day of rage" organized by former prime minister and Washington ally Saad Hariri spiraled out of control.

The largest riots took place in the northern city of Tripoli, where an angry mob set fire to a satellite truck belonging to the pan-Arab satellite channel Al Jazeera. The news crew, which was reporting from the roof of a nearby office, took refuge in the building along with reporters from the local Lebanese station New TV until they were evacuated by the Lebanese army, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists and others.

By all accounts, Hariri's supporters made life a nightmare for journalists trying to cover one of the biggest international news stories so far this year. 

The citizens’ revolution in Tunisia that forced dictator Zine el Abidine ben Ali to flee the country provides many lessons for the Arab world. Regimes should keep the lessons in mind to avoid repeating Tunisia’s experience in their own countries, while citizens can draw inspiration in hopes of effecting democratic change.

First, Tunisian citizens have reminded Arabs of the main lesson of democratic transformations: Never underestimate the potential of peoples stifled under the yoke of authoritarianism. No matter how long the rule lasts or how tight its grip, citizens will instigate change through sudden revolutions and uprisings with the power to overcome corruption and bullets.

Second, Arabs have learned that authoritarian regimes lack public legitimacy, even if they create economic growth. Under Ben Ali, Tunisia had the highest growth rate among Arab countries outside the Gulf region; average annual individual income rose to $4,000, education became more widespread, and illiteracy rates were cut significantly.

Once this growth stagnated, however, many Tunisians became dissatisfied and had no place to turn to air their grievances. Their concerns about bread-and-butter issues quickly evolved into a broader demand for political liberties and democracy.

Police descended on a Tehran theater earlier this week and halted performances of the play "Hedda Gabler" by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen after an Iranian news agency blasted the classic drama in a review.

Coincinding with the incident, media reports surfaced about the creation of a new body to regulate cultural affairs in the Islamic Republic, signaling that a wider crackdown on artists might be underway.   

Theatergoers had flocked to Tehran's City Theater on Tuesday night to watch the drama, which had been playing since Jan 5. But when they arrived they were met by a crowd of police officers and informed that the play had been suspended.

A group of political dissidents charged with plotting against the government of Bahrain are stonewalling the prosecution by refusing to cooperate with state-appointed lawyers after their own legal team withdrew in protest over the authorities' refusal to investigate torture claims.

On Thursday, the trial for 25 dissidents accused of terrorism was adjourned until Jan. 6 after the state-appointed lawyers told the court they could not do their job without their clients' cooperation, according to organizations following the case. Local media has been barred from covering the trial.

The trial has become the most visible symbol of the Sunni monarchy's crackdown against the largely Shiite opposition, which has sparked riots and led to the arrest of hundreds of people since it was launched in the months leading up to the October parliamentary elections.

Bahrain, a close ally of the United States and host to the Navy's Fifth Fleet, has come under heavy criticism from local and international human rights organizations, which have accused authorities of torturing the defendants on the pretext of trumped-up charges.

American diplomats appeared pleased with Saudi Arabia's new strategy to control editors and journalists, according to a secret State Department dispatch disclosed this week by the watchdog site WikiLeaks that offered a rare peak into the shadowy mechanisms of censorship in the ultra-conservative kingdom.

The May 11, 2009, diplomatic cable titled "Ideological and Ownership Trends in the Saudi Media" noted approvingly that the government seemed to be opening up to a certain amount of foreign cultural influence in the form of Hollywood movies and television shows while cracking down on Islamist messages deemed too extreme even for the state-approved brand of fundamentalist Wahhabi Islam.

But despite the author of the report's apparent hope that shows like "Desperate Housewives" and "Late Night With David Letterman" would serve as an antidote to some of the more conservative trends in the country, the document makes clear that the government has no intention of ceding control over the message, just tweaking it a little.

Saudi regulatory bodies, which are beholden to the royal family, have evolved to thrive in a dynamic new media environment, switching to a more subtly coercive and decentralized approach. "Instead of being fired or seeing their publications shut down, editors now are fined [$10,600] out of their own salaries for each objectionable piece that appears in their newspaper," the cable read. "Journalists, too, are held to account."

Four journalists working at the country’s foremost liberal daily newspaper have been arrested and charged with security crimes, Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jaffari-Dowlatabadi announced Wednesday.

The four were arrested earlier this week at the offices of Sharq, a prominent daily newspaper associated with the country’s reformist faction, which is under severe pressure from hardliners who have gained the upper hand in the country's political establishment.

Those arrested were among the leaders of the newspaper. They included Ali Khodabakhsh, Sharq’s managing director and co-owner; Ahmad Qolami, the editor-in-chief; Kayvan Mehrgan, head of Sharq’s political desk; and Farzaneh Rostai, head of the international desk.