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Ted Scheinman and Aaron Wiener

Washington, D.C.

Homepage: http://www.washingtonindependent.com

Aaron Wiener is the assistant editor of The Washington Independent. Ted Scheinman is the Web editor of the Washington City Paper.

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The Nine-Percenters: A Moroccan micro-blogging mutiny

August 11, 2009
Last Tuesday, after reading an Al Jazeera article on the release of Laura Ling and Euna Lee, a Moroccan expat named Hisham Twittered the following:

http://bit.ly/zO2si US Journalists released! Has it been for Moroccan journalists they would have been abandoned #9pcMaroc

It's true; things haven't gone too swimmingly for Moroccan journalists of late. Criticizing Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, they've learned, will cost you 3 million dirhams (about $370,000); discussing off-color Islamic humor will get you suspended from journalism. And on August 1, the Ministry of Communication seized 100,000 copies of the provocative French-language magazine TelQuel and its Arabic sister-pub Nichane because they contained a poll on King Mohammed VI's popularity. Conducted on the tenth anniversary of the king's ascension, the survey, it has since been revealed, showed a 91% approval rating for the king (known as le Roi Cool, or simply M6, by the more affectionate of his subjects.)

Hisham's hashtag, "#9pcMaroc," refers to the remaining 9%.

Iran taught the world that suppression on any scale breeds a Twitterstorm, and the mini-drama that's played out on newsstands and monitors over the past week and a half highlights three central paradoxes in the debate over Morocco's future. More...

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