In the February 22 NR, I have a piece on Internet freedom — and I have been expanding on that piece in recent columns. I draw particular attention in today’s Impromptus to Wael Abbas. He is probably the best-known blogger in Egypt, and more like an independent journalist than a blogger. Egypt is a place sorely in need of independent journalists. Abbas champions openness, human rights, democracy, and all that stuff that the hated George W. Bush used to go on about. I’d bet dollars to doughnuts that Wael Abbas doesn’t hate Bush all that much.

In any case, he has for years been subject to police harassment and threats. They have called him a Zionist agent, a Christian convert, a homosexual — these are not light charges in Egypt. In that column today, I link to a video that details the police threats: here. You notice a certain sameness. There are repeated references to the blogger’s mother (references of the most vile kind). Repeated references to homosexuality. References to the shame that Abbas has allegedly brought the country. All of this is entirely typical — Pryce-Jones explains in The Closed Circle. For some time now, Abbas has been rather too big to arrest: too popular, too known, too admired. But the Egyptian state had had enough in mid-January, when it arrested him. Yesterday was a good day — a really good day: for Abbas was acquitted in court. (For a story, go here.) I hope he keeps going, undaunted. And he and other bloggers, in oppressed parts of the world, remind us how lucky we are that we live where we can speak freely.