Lack of freedom in the Middle East--I have tasted it :(

Back in 2004, I went to Dubai during a trip to India.  No, I didn't stay at the Burj Al Arab--I merely stood outside the gates and took the photo on the right.  They don't pay me enough to have even a cup of coffee there!

I stayed at a decent hotel that was a couple of blocks away from my brother's apartment.  A few hours after checking in, I went downstairs to check my email from the computers in the lobby.

I typed in www.wou.edu and waited for the university's home page to load up so that I could get to the email.  Boy was I shocked when instead of the familiar page, the monitor displayed in big, bold, bright red colors "Site Banned."

It was one hell of a shock that completely rattled me.  My immediate thoughts were along the lines of, "if I can't access my university email, then what are the other ways in which anybody might be watching my moves?"  My next thought was whether I should hide my American passport and identity, and kind of merge in with the huge Indian population there.  Particularly because my trip there was soon after the American invasion of Iraq, which wasn't favorably viewed especially in the Middle East.

For the rest of the four days that I was there, I hid my American identity as much as I could.  I couldn't wait to get the heck out of Dubai and the UAE.

I couldn't understand then, nor can I even now, how people continue to live in societies where simple freedoms are circumscribed by big brother governments.  My brother suggested that I find a university job in Dubai or anywhere in the Middle East because they paid American faculty a whole lot of money.  I laughed it off--I didn't want to offend him by describing the "site banned" incident and how I way prefer to be a pauper in a freer society than otherwise.

Do I think that freedom is a universal right?  I am not ready for that leap of faith. All I know is that I prefer freedom and, as I tell students, I would take America any day over any of the countries that I have visited or read about.  The primacy of freedom is also why I am a card-carrying member of the ACLU--you should too.

I do wish for a world without authoritarian regimes, and for people to have the option to choose freedom.