There was never such a thing as true freedom of speech. In the past, in order to speak freely you had to have access to a printing press, a newspaper, a radio or a TV station. Until now. The age of blogging has begun. The internet revolution has given us all a chance to be irreverent, blasphemous and ungrammatical in public. We can reveal secrets, blow whistles, spill beans or just make stuff up. The old elites don't like it. In fact, they really hate it. Should we fall silent? Absolutely not! Let's demand that modern liberal society lives by the principles it claims to embrace. Bloggers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your gags.
I am professor of international relations at Shanghai Jiatong University, Shanghai, PRC. I got a PhD from the Dept of Political Science, Yale University, in 1993 and between 1995 and 2007 I was a senior lecturer in the Dept of Government at the London School of Economics. In my work I try to use historical and sociological case studies in order to reflect philosophically on the world and our human condition.
No, that's not a current photo. We all had ABBA hair back in the 80s.
