In this article Dibya Sarkar from USA Today talks about internet cencorship and whether or not people should have the freedom to express their views online without being imprisoned. Cisco Systems was thought to have helped the Chinese government with their ban of a religious group called "Falun Gong". However, Cisco Systems denies involvement. Many problems similar to this arise for companies such as Cisco, Google, and Yahoo because while they are doing business with the US where they must not deny anyone their right to freedom of speech, they are also doing business with other countries such as China that limit citizen access to the internet. Because of this, many human rights groups have targeted these companies.

I do not really have a clear stance on this issue. On one side of the argument, I do believe that the first amendment to the freedom of speech must not be denied even when it comes to the internet. However with companies such as Google and Yahoo who have business with countries who do not give their citizens the right to freedom of speech, it is impossible to please everyone. I can see how this is a human rights issue and that everyone has the right to express their views. However, the internet can be a very dangerous place and when dangerous cults start spreading their views, I believe it poses a major threat to society. I personally believe that the security and safety of a country should be the governments top priroity.

I know it has been a really long time since I last posted but dear readers it was for many reasons, to begin with I was really busy and I really couldn’t find time to write anything, then there was the internet censorship thing and later I received a threat from an international organization aimed to kill Iraqis!!

But here am I again…please spread the word.

Let’s begin with the explosion thing, I’m sure most of you haven’t heard about explosions in Baghdad for some time and even if you hear that there was an explosion you wouldn’t hear the accurate number of them or where they happened or how many were killed…well, most recently there was an explosion in Adhamiya/ Raghiba Khatoon (known as Camp) by a wired car that targeted the leader of the awakening in that area and lead to the death of many people and severe damage to the buildings nearby including the clinic of a colleague who miraculously didn’t die…there were many explosions and terrorism activities that happened but sure there is no time to mention all of them, but let’s start from now and on.

Generally, Iraqis now are concerned more about the Swine flu (Influenza type A H1N1) than explosions and terrorism! Everybody even the physicians are clueless! No One knows what to do and there is a general situation of panic among the people.

The ministry of health is doing nothing about it and in a state of denial, with a very strong media coverage to make the people believe Iraq is swine flu free…they should at least give lectures to the Doctors and the medical career workers about this hard to diagnose disease.

People are coming in dozens to the governmental hospital I work in now to seek advice and to check and if anyone wants to check he must come to a normal hospital and the hospital will give him a paper to go to the central laboratories and then he will be sent to some laboratories for the WHO who will take swabs and see if they have it or not!! Damn bureaucracy, this procedure will take about 5 days!! If the patient didn’t die during that time he will spread it to hundreds of people who will spread it to another hundreds…many parents are refusing to send their kids to schools and they are even thinking of skipping this year…many schools have told their students that they will not be able to come to school unless they bring a report from the hospital that they are not infected with swine flu and they come to us but the problem is that we haven’t received any official or non-official instructions about dealing with the situation.

And the really sad thing is that they haven’t provided us with the simplest equipments to protect ourselves like the effective masks (filter masks) , it’s well known that the first to be protected is the medical staff since they will be the ones who are in direct contact with the effected and may be the cause of the disease outbreak.

And if I want to continue talking about the state of denial the health ministry is living in I would not finish, all they care about is the show business.

Sadly, the humans have no rights or value in the land where the first human’s law were established.