My extended interview with the great Melbourne-based book-related blog, Literary Minded, about The Blogging Revolution, its ideas and how to find alternative voices online:
Democracy can never be imported. Never. In a place such as Cuba, where the web community is tiny, partly due to the absurd US embargo and Castro’s fear of free speech, there appears to be a desire for a modernised socialism. Sure, American hip-hop is massively popular with the young, but getting food on the table is more important than aping unregulated capitalism.
Too many in the mainstream media gauge citizens in the non-Western world as how they can be useful to ‘us.’ They’re not really human beings, rather objects to be pitied or transformed. Our journalists need to do much more listening and less preaching. Freedom for a young woman in Damascus may be having the ability to pray five times a day at her local mosque but still admire Angelina Jolie.