Another one down

The anonymous Egyptian blogger, who posted on the site Rantings of a Sandmonkey has decided to quit. Well, so what, you might say. Bloggers give up all the time.

Sandmonkey's reasons for stopping are deeply depressing, though. He does not feel that he is safe in Egypt any more. Not that he ever thought he was safe but he is convinced that his anonymity has been pierced what with State Security agents lurking around his street and asking questions about him.

There has been tightening up of control in Egypt and free-thinking people like Sandmonkey were unlikely to escape the attention of the agents (or, for that matter, of the Muslim Brotherhood, whom we are now supposed to take seriously as a force for good).

He also adds an interesting comment about the Egyptian blogosphere, which has become, in his opinion, too inward-looking, engaged, it seems, in perpetual navel-gazing and mutual admiration. This does not surprise me. The same phenomenon could be observed with the dissidents of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Isolated from the rest of their society, they spent a lot of time talking to each other and writing for each other, having better links with Western groups than with others in their own countries. It was one reason why many of them found the post-Communist world more disturbing than one would have expected.

Read Sandmonkey's last post in full (and then go back to his previous ones). The blog will be missed and another scalp can be added to the forces of oppression.