Saudi blogger awarded by top EU human rights Award

Raif Badawi, a blogger and activist who has been imprisoned and publicly flogged for criticizing Saudi Arabia’s religious establishment, was awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, the European Union’s top human rights award, on Thursday.

Martin Schulz, the president of the European Parliament, who announced the award, called Mr. Badawi “an extremely good man, an exemplary man who has had imposed on him one of the most gruesome penalties” that “can only really be described as brutal torture.” Mr. Schulz urged the Saudi king to “immediately grant mercy to Mr. Badawi and to free him so that he can accept the prize.”

He added, “In the case of Mr. Badawi, fundamental human rights are not only not being respected, they are being trodden underfoot.”

Mr. Badawi, 31, was arrested in 2012 — on charges that included apostasy, cybercrime and disobeying his father — after he started a website that criticized the Saudi religious establishment. In 2013, he was sentenced to seven years in prison and 600 lashes. The next year, he was resentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes. (He was not convicted of apostasy, which carries a death sentence.)

On Jan. 9, Mr. Badawi received his first 50 lashes at a mosque outside the port city of Jidda. It is not clear why he has not been caned since then, though his wife, Ensaf Haidar, has said that he is in poor health and might not survive the caning. Ms. Haidar and the couple’s three children live in Canada, where they sought asylum.

Mr. Badawi’s case has become a cause célèbre among human rights observers. Officials at the United Nations, the United States and other Western powers have condemned his sentencing, as have Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. This month, he was the co-recipient of the PEN Pinter Prize, a free-speech award established in 2009 in honor of the British playwright Harold Pinter

The authorities also jailed Mr. Badawi’s lawyer, Waleed Abulkhair, the founder of a group called Monitor of Human Rights in Saudi Arabia. He was sentenced last year to 15 years in prison for undermining the government, inciting public opinion and insulting the judiciary.

Reached by telephone, an official at the Saudi Mission to the European Union in Brussels said the kingdom did not have a response to the announcement. He pointed to a past statement in which the Saudi authorities stated that their judicial system was independent and that it was not the place of outsiders to criticize it.

UN Human rights conference was also headed by Saudi Arab but seeing many examples of unfair punishments on free speech, many criticized this act. 

Link related to blog: Nation

" You'll be next" another Bangladeshi blogger on target list

What if you earn your bread and butter from your writings and then one day you are told if you would not stop writing you will be killed. It had been done with many in past and now the fearful bloggers of present era suffer from this as well.

They cannot be brave because they know someone will come from any corner of street and stab them with their knife or dagger, no bravery of words or wisdom will be required then.

We have seen few secular bloggers' assassination from the start of this year and now another one is under threat of losing his life. It was reported before that he is living under immense fear and planning to move from Bangladesh.

The free speech and freedom of expression is under threat as many have been victim of extremists. Annanya had been living under fear of losing his life and recently it was reported the extremists send him threats to end his life if he continues writing.

Speaking from Dhaka, Ananya — who is on a hit list containing the names of 84 atheist bloggers — said: "I am no stranger to death threats and bloodshed. My father, author Humayun Azad, was attacked on the streets. But what shocked me was the nature of threat that I got on Facebook. It addressed my father as 'Nastiker sardar'. It means the leader of atheists. It said being his son, I would meet a gruesome death. My throat would be slashed at Dhaka University's Raju Bhaskarjya! I feel lodging a police complaint is pointless. Eleven years have passed and the cops haven't been able to do anything about my father's assassins." 

Today, Ananya wears a helmet even while walking the streets of Dhaka and moves around in a car with tinted glasses. Leaving Bangladesh is something he is considering after the threat. "Perhaps I need to rethink now. I've stopped writing my blog. I had begun writing a book that's halfway through. Next week, I am planning to go to India." 

His father was also assassinated in 2003 for writing Islamist fundamentalism and now it's Annanya's turn to pay the price of being bold and secular.

“People have told me to refrain from writing,” said 25-year-old Ananya, who quit his job as a newspaper columnist after Washiqur Rahman became the second blogger on the list to be killed, hacked to death in Dhaka in March.

The problem is that extremists do not negotiate or feel the need of debate, this also happened in Pakistan when Sabeen Mehmud was assassinated for being bold and having secular ideology.

No patience, less usage of logic and critical thinking is making our generation more aggressive, and such people are easy targets of extremists groups. Under different skins they attack bold people who have different ideology from them by silencing their voices forever.

Link realted to blog: Guardian

Instagram Posts can be sold in thousands of Dollars, no joke

Who can earn from their single Instagram post this question might pop in your mind. But there are a lot of people now who can earn from their social media posts and they are doing this at very young age.

Recently it was known that many fashion bloggers are earning thousands from their single Instagram post. Wow it may be a new business for them because they have to do nothing just to share their post. Few cost more than $15,000 for single post and some earn more than $100,000 dollars from their Instagram.

This astonishing figure has been revealed by Danielle Bernstein, US-based blogger behind her online diary We Wore What. In an interview with Harper’s Bazaar, she spoke about how she reaps big money from Instagram as brands contact her to promote their products on her account.

Bernstein, 22, who has a 992,000 strong following on Instagram commands "from $5,000 - to $15,000" from brands per post (the equivalent of £3,000 - £9,500).

If that sounds like an extraordinary amount of money to be paid for posting a picture on social media, for some bloggers that's small change.

"If you have upwards of six million followers, your fee can be $20,000 to $100,000 a shot," says Kayleen Schaefer.

Turning a blog into a full-time career is by no means a new career path; but the pay per post social media business model is creating a new generation of online superstars.

The global favorite bloggers are Chiara Feragni, Kristina Bazan of Kayture, Leandra Medine of Man Repeller, Aimee Song of Song of Style and many are the personal style bloggers and use the power of social media for their earnings. 

Chiara is the first blogger who made to Elle Magazine’s cover as well.

New cover: Elle Denmark streetstyle 🙌🏻 Pic by @vincenzo_grillo #TheBlondeSaladNeverStops #NeverEver

A photo posted by Chiara Ferragni (@chiaraferragni) on May 27, 2015 at 4:11am PDT

link related to blog: Independent