Although I can’t read a word of his blog, Fouah al-Farhan has been taken into custody by the Saudi government for posting some remarks critical of the government.

They are supposedly holding out for a written apology, so if indeed we do see one expect it to be completely bogus. I mean, lets face it. If someone arrests you for excercising free speech and then you apologize for doing so, you’re clearly lying through your teeth.

Those of you that are regulars can guess what I feel about this. Frankly I don’t care what country you live in, freedom of speech is the most basic human right. From it all other freedoms flow. In my opinion any government that decides it can no longer tolerate free speech is one that should be overthrown by the people - from whom all power is truly derived.
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I was tipped off to this ACLU article by T-Critic, whom I have a daily subscription to and always enjoy seeing the new T-Shirt designs.

Did you know that wearing a t-shirt with Arabic writing to an airport is the equivalent of a “person wearing a t-shirt at a bank stating, ‘I am a robber’”? No? Then you clearly don’t work with the TSA, who barred Reed Jarrar over there from boarding his flight at JFK because his shirt had terrifying non-Roman characters on it.

The shirt did also have English characters under the Arabic script (it says “We will not be silent” — no, but you certainly will be delayed), but that could easily be a terrorist trick, trying to convince gullible American infidels that the shirt doesn’t actually say “If you can read this I am going to run this airplane into the Kennedy Center.”

The ACLU has taken Jarrar’s case and they encourage passengers across the nation to show up at airports in t-shirts with big cartoon bombs on them or that say “Big Johnson Says You Can Tell a Lot About a Man by the Size of His Shoe Bomb” because frankly donations have been way up over the last couple years.

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First of all, NO… my blog is not digressing into another porn site! Actually it’s sad, but I really debated about reporting this because nudity is involved. But I decided that it was for the common good and that the vast majority of my readers would probably appreciate the link…

The popular women’s magazine Jane has launched a Breast Health Guide, and a related Boob Blog called Show Us Yours!

The blog encourages regular women to send in a photo of their own breasts and a description about what they like about them. A LOT of women have taken up the challenge and they range from small to very, very large, and also including brave women with mastectomys, the site proves that boobs come in all shapes and sizes and that the most important thing is not what they look like, but that you are loved for who you are.
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Freedom. It’s nice, right? It ought to be… the freedom we enjoy was paid for with the blood of our forefathers, and is maintained by the blood of our siblings. And no freedom is more precious than that of speech. From it all other freedom flows.

Unfortunately there are still many oppressive regimes that do not offer the luxury of free speech, and people are being tortured and killed for speaking out against injustice. (As I’ve often noted.) This is why I have decided to put my money where my mouth is and provide financial support for the Freenet Project.
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Just a few days ago I read about yet another bit of unbelievable Internet censorship coming out of China. It seems they have decided to eliminate access to the popular blogging site LiveJournal - effectively shutting down access to 1.8 million blogs!

This got me thinking. Given that I routinely report on Chinese abuses I wondered how many - if any - of my readers were coming from China.

For those of you who are not aware, Web servers collect various generic statistics such as the IP address of visitors. These IPs can be traced back to the country of origin and I can view a report of where visitors are coming from.

As you can see in the attached image I haven’t had a single visitor from China. This simply cannot be a coincidence.

The next time you take your freedom of speech for granted just think about the alternative. A young man in Egypt has been sentenced to 4 years in jail for “criticizing the President and Islam”.

Half of all Americans would be in jail if it were illegal here…

ALEXANDRIA, Egypt (Reuters)

An Alexandria court convicted an Egyptian blogger Thursday for insulting both Islam and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and sentenced him to four years in jail over his writings on the Internet.
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Religion is one of those topics I normally don’t want to touch with a 10 foot pole. I’ve found that no one ever agrees when it comes to this topic. Heck, I’ve seen Christians arguing with one another over the meaning of a particular passage of scripture, so you know no good can come of a debate with an Atheist.

Having said that, I was very disturbed to learn that some YouTube staffer decided to ban a member on religious grounds. Nick Gisburne, an outspoken member of the YouTube community recently posted a video comprised solely of a slide show of quotes taken from the Qur’an. All of the quotes deal with the negative aspects of being a non-believer - such as going to hell, being killed and burning for eternity.

Clearly this video illustrates just one side of the discussion, and I would imagine an appropriate Islamic response would have been a video depicting passages of love and peace from the same book. But no one had the chance to issue such a response.
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Regardless of political affiliation, Ted Kennedy issued a nice little speech in support of freedom on the Internet a few months ago. It’s worth taking a look at to make sure that you understand what’s at stake.

Also, if you’re unfamiliar with Net Neutrality please see my previous article, The Importance of Net Neutrality.
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“If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”