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Journalism of Courage
Once upon a time in a land far, far away, the evil, despotic king decided that his people were communicating too much, too freely, through pigeon post. He decided to clip all the pigeons8217; wings so that they couldn8217;t fly anymore, and the people would not be able to get their information without going directly to him. Uh, wait.
Not 8216;once upon a time8217; and certainly not 8216;far, far away8217; either. Think India, think the 21st century, and 8212; instead of winged messengers 8212; think weblogs.
Originally intended to be only a list of certain 8220;slanderous8221; blogs to be blocked, it led to most Internet Service Providers ISP putting fatwas on entire hosting domains, rendering a country of born-again Internet addicts virtually helpless and that pun was very much intended.
Okay, so that8217;s all right for the political bloggers, maybe even for the odd extremist or two planning world domination through the internet? Right? Wrong. Because, at the end of the day, your thoughts are your own to proclaim from the rooftops. And when it came to personal bloggers 8212; such as myself and a good number of others 8212; not being able to do a thing about our websites, it became, well, personal.
There are ways to still access the banned sites, the simplest being going to pk blogs pkblogs.com which offers a re-route to the banned blogspot website, but we shouldn8217;t have to do that. Many bloggers have even gotten together to form a Bloggers Collective groups.google.com/ group/BloggersCollective and are planning on filing a Right To Information petition. PK blogs was ironically set up to help Pakistanis access banned weblogs after their government slammed down on internet freedom as well.
What does this mean to us, the bloggers? It8217;s like those freak accidents you hear about and say, 8220;Oh that could never happen to me.8221; I remember reading about the Chinese government banning blogs and thinking how very lucky I was to be living in a country where it was okay for me to get my information from wherever I wanted. The Internet is a blessed place, full of the kind of people you want, and the kind of things you like. To have this last bastion of freedom monitored is just wrong.
You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.
