Isn’t this lovely? According to a University of Washington report, every year more and more bloggers are being arrested and prosecuted [1] for committing the felonious ‘crime’ of freedom of speech. More than half the arrests since 2003 occurred in some of our favorite countries like China, Iran, and Egypt where you could be sentenced to jail time for daring to say: WHAT THE FAK especially regarding the naughty topics like human rights abuses and government corruption. Gee, if these governments aren’t guilty of such things, then why are they punishing those who expose them? I think we’re seeing a great exhibit of the old saying: The more they deny it, the more you know it to be true. Just think Bush administration folks. Every time W or his boys assure us something is more definitely not true, what do we find to be absolutely wholeheartedly true? That which he denied the most vehemently of course!

Ok, you may say, this is not right. People in China or Iran or Denmark or Ohio or anywhere should have the right to speak their minds and say WHAT THE FAK regarding whatever the fak they damn well please just as we can so freely in the U.S. or U.K. or Canada or most of Europe, right? People should not be governed by oppressive regimes that control what a human being is able to express. If someone has a problem with something, they should be able to say so freely without fearing prosecution especially regarding human rights violations. If something so vicious is left unaddressed, how are we to ever solve pressing problems affecting people’s lives? If you were the subject of abuse, wouldn’t you hope for some kind soul who gave a flying FAK to open their mouth to try to help you? If you were, for instance, a woman sentenced to being stoned to death for maybe showing too much ankle in one of our favorite places like Saudi Arabia, wouldn’t you wish for people to make a lot of noise about it so maybe, just maybe, the rest of the world would band together and tell King Abdullah and his thugs: “Look, you backwards FAKS, just because you’re in charge of the oil spouts and everything and get Georgie to dance with you and your sword does NOT mean you can treat your people in this vile manner. How about we stone you to death and solve the first problem? How about that?” See something like that would qualify as what I call a D.S.A.F or ‘did society a favor’ because as I see it, that guy is someone we can do without along with all of his other shits who think they were put here to make the lives of others, especially the poor saps unfortunate enough to be born non-royal Saudis, absolutely faking miserable.

This is just one example. So many people in this world, especially plenty within the U.S suffering in dire situations like lack of proper health care thanks to our royally faked up system, need that voice. Usually our noise doesn’t make much of a difference because no one is reading or listening or if they are, they don’t give a fak. People of power seldom care if the little guy is suffering but then there are other little guys/girls like ourselves that feel it’s our duty to share what we know with others. Many people don’t know, and we strongly believe awareness is the only way we can ever hope for improvement. If people don’t know about such issues, how the fak will we ever improve them? As my mom used to say when we were kids, ‘the squeaky wheel gets the oil’ so the more noise we make, perhaps the more we can influence an improved outcome or not but we have to try and we have the fakin right to try and speak our minds.

So, needless to say I am extremely pissed off that people in some parts of the world like China are denied what we feel to be a natural human right to speak up for themselves. I know it seems we kick on China a lot here but let’s face it, they’re a plentiful source of wrong in so many ways, I can almost always count on China to supply me with a real life example to accompany my otherwise generic description of something that makes me say WHAT THE FAK. They are so reliable on this front, we’ve even dedicated an entire category to them(see FAK CHINA).

But while we all feel it’s incredibly wrong to deny your citizens the right to speak freely and completely expect people in China or Iran or Saudi Arabia to face prosecution for blogging as the only form of free press these countries could ever hope to have, would you faking believe some of these faked up countries are attempting to go after bloggers in free nations like the U.S.? Yes, it’s true. With a boundary-free medium like the internet, what I write here in the U.S. can be read in Egypt or Nigeria, and for some faking ridiculous reason, some of these countries are attempting to go after American bloggers writing in the U.S. for saying nasty, very faking true things about their faked up countries or their corrupt heartless politicians.

Ok, now I’m faked off. Let me use China again, why the fak not? If we here at WTF say FAK China and often comment on China’s widely known human rights abuses(it’s not exactly a secret guys, you have NO regard for humanity, ok?), some Chinese government FAK could very well attempt to prosecute us although we are neither Chinese citizens nor reside within their boundaries of governance. They have NO jurisdiction over me. Go FAK yourself I say. Who the FAK are these oppressive governments to attempt to squash the freedom of speech of an American publishing stories from the U.S.? Why the fak do they think they can not only deny their own citizens of such freedoms but now attempt to interfere in MY freedom of speech just because I happen to live in a place where I can say as I damn well please? It’s bad enough I need to worry about censorship by W in my allegedly free country. That’s another issue altogether.

This issue about global media and freedom of speech is both interesting and frightening because we’re actually discussing it. The Center for Democracy and Technology [2] has more information of this and related issues on its website and is definitely worth a browse so you’re aware especially if you are like us and very concerned that one day it’s going to be risky to open your mouth even within a free nation.

There is much discussion on this because it seems many now consider this a multi-faceted, complicated grey issue apparently since the internet knows no boundaries. While I tend to see mostly everything in shades of grey rather than black or white, this is one issue that is very black and white for me. As far as I’m concerned, I live in the U.S,, publish from the U.S.; therefore I should be merely governed by publishing laws within the U.S. Country of origin is the only factor. If we have freedom of speech here, I can say whatever the fak I want from here and do so with the peace of mind that the Saudis or the Chinese or the Egyptians cannot touch me when I point out how faked up they are. If the U.S. bends over for them like they did for the Chinese hosting the Olympics and how they do for the Saudis for oil and starts to restrict what we can write and publish as bloggers, it’ll be yet another example of how we’re bending over for the repressive regimes. Who else would care what people said if they weren’t trying to hide the truth from the world?