Iranian bloggers

Further to this story about a British blogger suffering negative consequences for what he wrote on his blog, and to this post of mine yesterday about Iran, see now the report here on the perils of blogging in that country:

Iran is becoming an increasingly dangerous place to keep an online diary.

Web logs have become a popular forum for dissent. And the Iranian government has responded by arresting dozens of bloggers.

Some of those detained are reportedly being held in solitary confinement and tortured.
.....
"Freedom of expression is really at stake at the moment," says Julien Pain, who runs the Internet Freedom Desk at the Paris based group Reporters without Borders.

"The Iranian authorities have been clamping down on regular media for a long time, but it's only in the last six months that they're harshly attacking cyber-dissidents and webloggers. It's really a serious situation."

Read the whole thing. All of us who blog in freedom, writing as we please within the normal constraints of the rule of law, should consider ways in which we can show our solidarity with Iranian bloggers. And, as I said in connection with the regime's attitude to music yesterday: this is a state of affairs that is obviously doomed. (Hat tip: Dan A.)