Bloggers of the World
Bloggers, they're everywhere, enjoying the Internet version of free speech. And who can resist the temptation to sound off, give advice, your opinion, censure, scream and holler your disgust and distrust at the state of the world and the idiots who make all the decisions on behalf of the rest of us. Bloggers are legion, and they are us, every one of us.But Big Brother is watching. Intently. It's a kind of pathology on a double scale. Bloggers have a need to vent, to screech their outrage at the world, and those against whom we rail have a need to spy, search out what has been written for all the world to see, revealing them for the bigots, the bullies, the liers and haters, the slanderers, the social deviants that they are.
Just think about the guy, pissed off about working conditions in a sweat shop or, say, the local hardware or deli (make that Home Depot and MacDonald's) and thinking he's safe, he can say anything he wants to, no one will know, unless he directs them to the site and they can have a good laugh at his revenge, small though it is, along with him.
But there are eyes everywhere, and people catch on pretty swiftly. Which explains why that guy just got fired, and the incautious lawyer in the law firm he detests won't get anywhere in the company now, and the guy who didn't get any satisfaction trying to deal with some bureaucratic nitwit in a big company is now being sued by them.
That's kind of one end of the scale, and let's face it, you pick yourself up, dust yourself off and move on over again. The darker side of this little exercise in free expression, venting, spite, call it what you will, is the kind of oversight that even Orwell couldn't foresee. Now here's a court in Alexandria sentencing an anti-government blogger to four years in prison.
That's downright painful. All the more so as his parents, conservative Muslims, have disowned him, his father stating he should be punished with the death sentence. In other words, Egypt's courts are more lenient than the Muslim populace, and that's kind of a downer.
Kareem Amer, 23, formerly a student at the Islamic institute of al-Azhar, wrote scathingly of his alma mater, his society, his religion and his president. He received 3 years' imprisonment on charges of contempt of religion, with another year thrown in for good measure for defaming President Hosni Mubarek.
Henceforth, the state says with this cautionary tale, mouth your views in private, in a blacked-out room, whispering words to yourself as you go quietly insane. Mr. Amer will now have ample opportunity to do just that. Along with others currently awaiting trial and judgement for similar Internet activities deemed criminally prosecutable.
Egypt's is an authoritarian regime, a gentle dictatorship for the good of the people, by a paternalistically-loving leader where freedom of expression was never considered good for anyone's health to begin with. Now the debate has been joined on the limits of religious/political expression in the Arab world.
Bloggers of the world unite. For if sheer force of numbers could avail against the forces of evil intolerance and immoderate religious beliefs would we not all be far better off? This showdown has been two years in the making, while Amer tongue-lashed government and religious institutions, accusing clerics of advocating terrorism and stifling progress.
Sounds to me as though he should have been awarded a medal for fearless advocation of badly needed change, a leap into the world of the present.
Labels: Troublespots
posted by Pieface @ Friday, February 23, 2007
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