In case you missed the headline: Arab governments invent police power in space. Or so said Moroccan satirist Ahmed Senoussi (stage name: Bziz). Appearing on al-Jazeera, Messer Senoussi noted the wonder of Arab technological development that Arab police forces were know controlling the skies.

Of course Messer Senoussi, who appeared voluntarily bound and gagged, was joking. Messer Senoussi was mocking the new law adopted by the Arab League to curtail the freedom of pan-Arab satellite channels who have crated a nuisance for the regions autocratic regimes who are used to controlling their media. But with the birth of satellites (or rather introduction into the Arab world) and some oasis of free media (Lebanon and Qatar), Arabs have been able to access television stations that are unabashedly critical of their despotic regimes.

What Senoussi said on al-Jazeera goes to the heart of the malaise in the Arab world. It seems that no matter the progress in human rights the rest of the world has enjoyed and no matter the progress Arabs have made in some variates in free media, Arab governments will not cease trying to stifle any dissent among their people. This is what Arab governments waste money on: police power to control now even media outside their borders as a time when schools are crumbling and the average Egyptian is living on less than $100 a day.

Messer Senoussi is himself the target of censorship by the Moroccan authorities. Banned under Hassan II and then allowed to resume his stage comedy with the accession to the throne of his son Muhammad VI in 1999. Senoussi has recently been banned once more from preforming in his country after referring to the monarch as Sa Majetski; in reference to King Muhammad VI’s love of water bikes.

Perhaps the Arab masses should stop worrying about banal and snide Danish cartoons and turn to how satirists are treated in their country.