Thursday, October 14, 2004

Outrage good Mercutio!

Let's express my concern over the freedom of the internet today shall we?

Earlier this week it was reported that Syria has imprisoned a young man for posting photos of a PEACEFUL demostration on a website that is based in Germany. Apparently the Syrian secret service equilivent has the time and resources to be monitoring all email and internet transmissions from their citizens. Not only is the 3 year prison sentence an outrage, but also the waste of time and manpower to monitor that the Syrian government expends. You can not possibly tell me that Syria could put those funds to better use. The information he posted was not subversive or anything, well I guess that depends on your perspective. However, giving such a harsh punishment is not going to prevent people from doing similar things, but encourage them to see what they can get away with.

Second instance of outrage for today, Iran has not started to crack down on bloggers within their country. Honestly I was wondering when that would start to happen, but I was enjoying the press that the blogger boom in Iran was getting. The situation just makes me sad. Here I sit in my safe secure office writing endless dribble for the whole world to read. I don't really report on anything that is being done wrong to me....that doesn't make much sense. Let's put it this way, as an American I am extremely spoiled in the fact that I can say what I want to say and have no consequences for it. Whereas, others who have opinions and are witnessing things that need to be told to the world are not allowed to speak. The silence is deafening. My words cannot fill that void.

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