The public-privately funded Freedom Houses composes annual lists and reports on the state of freedom in the world. The news this year is not good. In every single region, from the Middle East to North America; states have done worse in 2008 than the previous years in varying degrees to secure the freedoms of their citizenry. Freedom Houses ranks nations on a chart of, say, press freedom, civil liberties, ect..; and then gives an ranking of either “Free”, “Partly Free”, or “Not Free”.

For the year 2008, “out of the 195 countries and territories covered in the study, 70 (36 percent) are rated Free, 61 (31 percent) are rated Partly Free and 64 (33 percent) are rated Not Free. This represents a modest decline from the 2008 survey in which 72 countries and territories were Free, 59 Partly Free and 64 Not Free. The new survey found that only 17 percent of the world’s population lives in countries that enjoy a Free press.”

The Middle East and North Africa remain the most un-regions in the world. The same week that Freedom House’s annual report was released showing the degree of repression in the region, the Committee to Protect Journalists also released their list on the top 10 worse nation for bloggers. Several regional countries; Syria, Tunisia, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, made the list.

Usually Israel stands out as the only regional nation to be deemed “Free” by Freedom House. Of course, Freedom House does not consider the plight of Palestinians under Israeli occupation but only those living within Israel “proper”. But this year, the Jewish state has been downgraded to “Partly Free” due to its prevention of journalism during the recent assault on Gaza; an attack that killed over 900 Palestinians of whom over 400 were children.

In accordance with a government commission on the summer 2006 war with Lebanon, the Israeli government tired to control the news. It banned Western journalists from Gaza and evoked a state law that limits the scope of domestic journalist coverage in a failed effort to prevent a PR disaster.

As a final note, what was amusing about the report is that it ranked once again Kuwait’s press to be freer than Lebanon’s. This is a gross misrepresentation. There are no limits on criticism of the government in Lebanon. Lebanese papers criticize and attack the president and prime minister [and everyone] in Lebanon all the time. In Kuwait, the Emir is off-limits. How Freedom House figured this one out is beyond me.