Good grief. Now someone has been jailed in Egypt for expressing his views on a blog. A BBC News item today reports that Abdel Kareem Soliman, a former student at Al-Azhar University has been tried and convicted of insulting religion (for which he received a three year sentence) and insulting Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak (for which he received a one year sentence). Well, I have a two word sentence for the people who try to stop us voicing our opinions on the web ...... but I won't be able to say it here, in case, um... someone is watching.
Makes you sick, all this surveillance, doesn't it? Only last week I read an article in the Independent newspaper about Catherine Sanderson, a British woman who had been sacked from her job with Anglo-French accountancy firm Dixon Wilson because her employers thought she was being disloyal to them in her blog La Petite Anglaise. When the news broke, her blog traffic went up exponentially overnight. She has now reportedly signed a £100,000 deal with a major publisher to write about her experience. Mais quelle domage! (That's French, you know) See - you can't keep a good man, or woman down. And sensoring the blogosphere is just plain nonsense. What would happen if we censored our students' essays? Or if our universities or colleges tried to censor our thoughts? I would like to hear your views... you have freedom of speech, you know.
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