It's still absolutely fascinating that in the year 2007, we still have societies that won't allow citizens to use the internet, or fellow countrymen beat and kill Monks and protesters, or kids hang noose's from trees. Okay, off topic but it is really all the same. The so called "War on Terrorism" is so flawed and limited in it's scope that it can't see beyond the turban to see the oppression right up in it's face. And in my world, oppression is the cruelist form of terrorism.
The free expression of ideas is what has kept this world moving since human's began to speak. Even the most oppressed of the oppressed found ways to tell their stories under dire circumstances. Some without even realizing they were doing it, wittness the Myans.
And that spirit hasn't changed today. October 9th, being the day Che Guevera died, a man who fought alongside Castro to overthrough what they deemed an oppressive government, cast a heavy shadow over Cuba's citizens who seek to tell of their tales on the internet.
On a tiny Island a short distance from American shores, folks go to great lengths to do what we Americans take for granted, and often chide each other for doing, blogging. Expressing idea's and information from one's own personal point of view is risky, costly and a very daunting task. ---When 32-year-old Yoani Sanchez wants to update her blog about daily life in Cuba, she dresses like a tourist and strides confidently into a Havana hotel, greeting the staff in German. Once inside the hotel, Sanchez has to write fast. Not because she fears getting caught, but because online access is prohibitively expensive. An hour online costs about $6, the equivalent of two weeks' pay for the average Cuban.
Independent bloggers like Sanchez have to build their sites on servers outside Cuba, and they have more readers outside Cuba than inside.
Cuba's independent bloggers take a very different line, and prefer to remain anonymous or use pseudonyms in order to protect themselves. A blogger who goes by the name of "Tension Lia" posts photographs of the ruinous state of Havana's architectural treasures on blog called Havanascity (http://havanascity.blogspot.com).
The creator of "My island at midday" told Reuters by e-mail that the anonymity of the blog has allowed him to say some things that nobody has dared write about. "Dissent has always been frowned upon. Intolerance is still the rule in Cuba, even though Cuban society is starting to adapt to diversity of opinions."---
Read the entire article
Murray from Palm-Mac got hinself a shiny new black 80BG iPod over the weekend, and he's in love ---"I gotta say that syncing with my home imac is a dream. I just plugged it in via the usb connector and it appeared as a drive in iTunes. Click on the ipod listing in the left hand pane and it brings up the menu in full screen with the tabbed options at the top. From then on in it's just a question of ticking which playlists, pictures and films you want to sync across. It's so easy and I was surprised at how quick it managed to sync everything across....it's way faster than dropping files directly onto a sd card or via Missing Sync. I'm sure I've made the right decision here to go for a standalone music and movie player....things have been so simple to set up so far and the music quality on the ipod is better than on any previous smartphone."---
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