Reports of state-sponsored violence against journalists and independent media outlets in Egypt have continued to flow in since February 2, when supporters of President Mubarak first clashed with anti-government protestors. Take action by sending appeals directly to the Egyptian government.

“Truth is always the first casualty in war.” A Norwegian lawmaker nominates WikiLeaks for the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, saying that the organization has contributed to the advancement of human rights and freedom of expression, in much the same way as last year’s winner, Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo.

Three journalists, including the former president of the Belarus PEN Center Vladimir Neklyaev, have been released from KGB prison in Belarus, though their movements and activities are being tightly controlled. Many other journalists and human rights activists remain incarcerated.

On the last day of the Sundance Film Festival, Doug Liman directed a production of PEN’s Reckoning with Torture project featuring Robert Redford, Ellen Barkin, America Ferrera, and other artists and authors. As Dahlia Litwick writes in Slate, perhaps “it is only through the arts and a campaign to create public outrage that America can begin to reckon with the moral and human consequences of the U.S. torture policy.”

In the latest PEN podcast, Don DeLillo reads an excerpt from his novel Mao II at PEN’s benefit event for the Belarus Free Theater.

Is the web the “enemy of creativity”? Jim Holt reviews David Carr’s The Shallows: How the Internet Is Changing the Way We Think, Read and Remember in the London Review of Books.

Mother Jones reports that Harvard professor Michael Nye Jr. wrote a 2007 profile of Muammar Qaddafi for The New Republic as a paid consultant for the Monitor Group—a firm that was paid $3 million to “enhance the profile of Libya” and its leader.

The Committee to Protect Journalists finds evidence that members of the so-called “50 Cent Party”—Internet commenters paid by local government authorities—have been threatening foreign media. In more disturbing news, the web master of the Independent Chinese PEN Center Ye Du has been detained under charges of “subversion of state power.”

All through March, PEN will be celebrating Women’s History Month with a podcast lineup of some of our favorite women writers from the PEN archives.

In The Wall Street Journal, Gwendolyn Bounds cites research demonstrating more enhanced and ‘adult-like’neural activity in children who practiced handwriting.

“Everyone around the globe now associates Tahrir Square with freedom and revolution.” Banned books return to shops in Egypt and Tunisia. A book fair in Tahrir Square is also planned for the end of March.

Josh Gerstein reports that federal investigators accessed New York Times reporter James Risen’s bank records, credit reports, and phone logs in a CIA leak probe. Back in 2006, Risen spoke with Philip Gourevitch about press freedom in a PEN conversation.

fictionthatmatters:

Doaa el-Adl is currently being sued by the Egyptian National Center for Defense of Freedoms for her comic in Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper that depicts Adam & Eve being evicted from heaven after they refused to vote for the new Constitution. The accusation of blasphemy stems from Adam being a prophet, not a depiction of the prophet Mohamed.

Her latest cartoon is above.

Update: A previous version of this post spelled Doaa “Dooa”.