So you think you can blog?

During my childhood I always heard this expression "shhhh, walls have ears". And so, several political topics were banned from discussion even in the privacy of our living room. But I was never influenced by this paranoia, and I was never convinced that I could be persecuted for asking questions inside my house, or expressing my opinions. And so I grew up on the idea that the previous generation suffered from the civil war and that they are stuck on practices long dead before the end of the war.

So I blog normally, it's true I rarely have political posts, but it's not by fear. But I respect all kinds of blogs. It's just like a graffiti wall where people express themselves. Some in the hope of a change, other in the hope of touching a life, many simply by need of expression. Most of us are persecuted by our social environment. A lot of us don't find someone around who could be interested in some topic, or cause. So we blog, because we know that someone might share our interest, our fear, our hope.

I read today about Tal el Molohi. A 19 years old girl imprisoned last year for blogging in Syria. I was intrigued to know what did she write to deserve this sentence. So I looked for her blog. I don't know which is more shameful: imprisoning a student for blogging in general, or imprisoning her for what she wrote.

http://latterstal.blogspot.com/
http://palestinianvillages.blogspot.com/
http://talmallohi.blogspot.com/

I guess this is just a more modern way to create paranoia among citizens, for the newer generations who think they can talk! Just another way to teach people that the world may have stepped into a new century, but in this part of the world, the system is the only one to decide when minds can progress.

...

1 minute of silence is in order..

N.B: several bloggers are imprisoned around the world in almost every totalitarian regime. Unfortunately, in the Arab world we suffer from this injustice in almost all of our countries.