Words I am scared to write
I have been doing some work on the current series. I am reading material on the relationships between countries in the area of the conflict. It's tough to me to feel as though I am entitled to have an opinion. On The Guardian, I've gotten put down by people who are enraged on all sides of opinion. When did being a Progressive Humanist start being a bad thing?
I have also been searching for news sources from the Near East. It's weird because I am scared even to type the following words on my blog for fear that I am going to be tagged as a some kind of non-American. I've been watching English Al Jazeera. I'm even more scared that I linked to it on my blog--somehow I will be banned from commercial airlines or fail to qualify for a mortgage. Given what happened to that family on AirTran last week, I wouldn't be surprised. My husband had an excellent point: if they were going to destroy the plane, why did they want the "safest" seats? Frankly, I want to know how America looks from an outsider's perspective. You know, the whole forest for the trees thingy.
Our cable company had a chance to carry English Al Jazeera and it was shouted down by people who thought it would convert Americans to the terrorist cause. Huh?
What's wrong with getting another news market's take on World events? Especially from those places in the World where Wars and Combat and Killing is going down? Should I be labeled with a question mark because I watched the BBC when there was still strife with Northern Ireland? Or read Irish newspapers when I traveled there in 1993?
This is what the so-called Patriot Act has done to my sense of freedom of speech. Just because there are extremists in the Muslim world doesn't mean every Muslim is an extremist.
As Gen. Colin Powell said on Meet the Press when he endorsed Obama:
Exactly. My point exactly.
We will never be free from fear until the unknown becomes the known.
4 comments:
Amen. You and I can be on those lists together. I once posted a video from Al Jazeera on my blog.
http://truebluetexan.blogspot.com/2008/10/south-will-rise-again.html
Sometimes all the blathering about the MSM isn't as far off as we'd like to think. There are definitely things that don't get reported.
That said, Al Jazeera is a legitimate news source. Yes, they play Bin Laden's tapes. Yes, the have a slant towards Middle Eastern news. Surprise! They're in the Middle East. A slant is not bias.
People are afraid in this country to speak out against Israel for fear of being labeled anti-Semitic or even a terrorist sympathizer. It's nuts.
Write away, friend. Maybe if enough of us speak out, someone important will listen.
I often go to the Al Jazeera website to get a different point of view.
At this point in time, our mainstream media is so in the shitter that it does not know which way is up. The blogosphere is becoming the MSM's worst enemy.
Along with a lot of other realignment that is going to start, I think that the whole concept of news as we know it will change.
In fact, I just read before that for the first time ever, the NY Times actually sold ad space for their front page. Times are bad for print news.
You just keep typing away and saying what you need to say.
You are a college Professor. If you want, you can just contact a professional colleague who teaches Current Near East Affairs and pursue your own projects. It is in your contract to get published. What a wonderful subject to be published in.
I have interacted with Muslim Colleagues in the Interfaith Alliance {another good source for face to face perspectives} I have publically supported them in a very neoconservative state. It is scary and you should be on guard, but that is what makes you a great American as opposed to just being here saying the pledge of alliegance without understanding what it truly stands for, what loyalty to the Great Experiment truly means.
People who fear hearing other views, know that they are wrong. They fear that wrongness being publicly visible. Its that simple. People secure in their knowledge of the spirit of their loyalty, fear no information, no dialogue. Ideas are not the problem. Fear is the problem.
I do a lot of research on eqally controversial subjects. I dont apologize for that. If the government wants to take me away for being curious, then clearly this is not the place I thought it was, and my loyalty to the Great Experiement cannot be transferred to loyalty to the great Big Brother.
I make a terrible syncophant. They should just shoot me now.
I sometimes say much less than I want to because I feel like big brother (not the one with the holding company) is watching and waiting to hook me up with something that will destroy my life but still, I just cannot keep my mouth shut. I worry about the places I go on the web, I worry about phone conversations, I worry what they'll dig up in a background check and what they'll do to me when they dig it up. Then finally I just follow the advice of Miles in the movie "Risky Business:"
"Joel, you wanna know something? Every now and then say, "What the fuck." "What the fuck" gives you freedom. Freedom brings opportunity. Opportunity makes your future."
Post a Comment