2003 / june / 11
Some Salam Pax
I'm not keeping up with the story of the famous Baghdad Blogger very well,
but here are two interesting links:
Jeff Jarvis'
Buzzmachine has a number of balanced entries, this link is to an
interview SP gave to an austrian magazine (to his roommate at the time when
he was studying).
And this entry from
Salam Pax himself made me happy for a moment:
(this is re: comments he's getting on his parents being part of the elite)
My mother, a sociologist who was very happy in pursuing her career at the ministry of education decided to give up that career when she had to choose between becoming Ba.ath party member and quitting her job, she became a housewife. My father, a very well accomplished economist made the same decision and decided to become a farmer instead.
You are being disrespectful to the people who have put the first copy of George Orwell.s 1984 in my hands, a heavy read for a 14 year old with bad English. But that banned book started a process and gave me the impulse to look at the world I live in a different way.
Imagine that for a moment. Living on the inside of a dictatorship, maybe even worse tha
n Orwell's Oceania, holding on to a copy of
Orwell's 1984 - and then even
letting your 14-year old son read it.
That is brave. That is refusing to surrender. That is humanity.
