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:: MAX BLACK ::

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." --C.S. Lewis

"The Swiss pocket knife of conservative thought on the web..." - Eli Kardrakian

"Bookmark Max and dump your subscription to the newspaper; if you don't have a birdcage you really don't need it anyway..." - Shirley St. James

:: Monday, June 28, 2004 ::

Democracy: A Virulent Meme*

Iraq the Model is all a-buzz:

I used to feel sorry for Arabs in other countries because I believe that we have much more freedom than they can dream of and my friends sometimes laughed at me especially when I mention Saudi Arabia or other gulf countries because my friends took only the economic aspect in their consideration.

Now, after reading hundreds of Arabs' comments, I can see jealousy in their words and they frankly envy us for what we have.
I'm sitting now in my living room expressing my feelings, posting my thoughts about any subject and criticizing anyone without fear while our neighbors still encounter serious risks when they want to *read* what someone else wrote in the internet.

Some people still doubt the effect of establishing democracy in Iraq on the region and I would like to point out that if this is what liberating Iraq has accomplished in opening some Arab's eyes (some of them wish the change to happen now!)even with all the difficulties Iraq is facing then what would it be like, say in five years, when Iraq becomes a prosperous and stable democracy!?

There were about 60 comments at the time when I viewed the forum, all of which came from Syrians, Iraqis, Saudis, and Egyptians from inside and outside their countries except for a small percentage that came from Sudan, Lebanon, U.A.E. and other Arab and Muslim countries.

I made some simple calculations and found that :
69 % of the posts were against punishing people for accessing certain websites.
20 % were with the punishment decision.
7 % denied that this incident really happened.
3 % were unsure of their opinion.

Michael Moore: Eat your fat heart out (we'll see whose meme is the most virulent).

Meme (pron. meem): A contagious information pattern that replicates by parasitically infecting human minds and altering their behavior, causing them to propagate the pattern. (Term coined by Dawkins, by analogy with "gene".) Individual slogans, catch-phrases, melodies, icons, inventions, and fashions are typical memes. An idea or information pattern is not a meme until it causes someone to replicate it, to repeat it to someone else. All transmitted knowledge is memetic.

:: Max 11:31 AM [+] ::
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