Sunday, September 7, 2008

The Blogging Revolution

I was given this book to read and I struggled to get past the introductory chapter. Of the 50 sentences in the first four pages, 14 sentences contain the words Bush, George W Bush, the US president, universally with a sneering aside. What this means is that in a book allegedly about blogging in repressive regimes, the author wastes 28% of his space in the first four pages criticising Bush and the US.

An example:
"Bush believed that saluting and supporting dissidents around the world, men and womeon who battled petty dictatorships or autocracies, would 'achieve human rights'. That these autocracies were often Washington-backed was a truth conveniently overlooked by the president."
Really?!!? These conveniently undefined autocracies are often backed by the US government?!? Burma? China? Iran? Russia? I'm pretty sure that's news to them. Note also the use of sarcastic quotes ( ` `), they're like scare quotes (" "), but more cynical. And the entire chapter is liberally sprinkled with them.

China get's a mention, along with the "complicity of Western companies" enabling repressive censorship regime, and of course Bush's administration "spying on citizen's internet traffic" does as well, although surprisingly Brown governments' ability to spy on all electronic communications of UK citizens is not. That these things are true and are worthy of discussion doesn't change the fact that the way it is phrased is to suggest there is some equivalence between "real" repressive regimes and the US and of course, evil capitalism.

To whit:
"Sharafedin loved his nation [Iran] and it's people but railed against its hijacking by mullahs and extremists in Washington"
It's about this time I switched off. In Iran, bloggers risk imprisonment, torture and their lives to write things that the government does not want reported on, but the "extremists in Washington" respond to the daily attacks and critical blogs of it's citizens by...writing their own blog.
"I was determined to reclaim words such as 'democracy', 'human rights' and 'freedom', beliefs that have been utilised to justify years of violent policies designed to subjugate nations to US foreign policy interests and Western markets"
Aha! The BIG evil of "Western markets". I do believe that the irony of writing about reclaiming "'democracy', 'human rights' and 'freedom'" in a country where the author has all the above, is lost on our earnest little communist.

I believe Mr Loewenstein is a West-hating socialist (note the revolution themed book cover...I doubt red was coincidental choice), who despite his travels to really repressive countries, can't help viewing the world through Bush-hating glasses (probably because all the ills in the world are Dubya's fault, ya see?) It will be interesting to see how he and his ideological comrades will have anything to write about after November.

NEWSFLASH: Socialism died in 1989. Get over it.

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