Praise be to God. The new ICTs are now the voice of the people. According to the experience of most intellectuals I had known in the Arab and Muslim worlds, most newspapers there have editors who fear competition, and who are thus hostile towards all intellectuals, and the majority of those who pretend to defend freedom of expression on their newspapers are just real mobile dictators who publish only what they like, some of them are masters of blackmail who chose to enrich themselves through the press… First, they criticize everything, then they get rich at the expense of the files they blackmail… We can also say that most of the press staff, including correspondents (who are sometimes officials), take advantage of press badges for their personal accounts; they blackmail some and write in favour of others…without these staff directors – who claim to be independent – connecting with the outside world to know what is happening behind their backs or with their knowledge… with their correspondents who have become now real crooks in some cities… It’s true that we can barely find some honest newspapers… It’s like looking for a needle in the Pacific Ocean… So Facebook and the internet are the only voice and way for the peoples and depressed… By: Acharif Moulay Abdellah Bouskraoui.

Things such as Facebook and Twitter express the peoples’ views. Therefore, they are considered an alive voice of the people. Thanks.

The sine qua non condition for establishing a real democracy is a public debate without barriers, in a real atmosphere of freedom; which is exactly what is lacking in the Maghreb where authoritarian regimes managed to condition people and create a state of mind in which citizens (or those who are supposed to be as such) find it normal to practice self-censorship and, by doing that, humiliate themselves to prove that they fit well in the oppression that crushes them with different degrees depending on the country in question. Anyway, the dominant feature in society has become hypocrisy created by fear. The reasons behind fear are not fictitious, of course. But weren’t there reasons to be scared during the colonial period? Wasn’t there repression against dissidence? Yet, that had not prevented people from expressing themselves and struggling to recover their dignity.
Living today in independent and sovereign countries, what has their dignity become? They became an inseparable part of an apathetic society. They became alienated in their own countries. They vibrate to go fight in Iraq, Gaza or Afghanistan, but do not show solidarity with strikers at their home country. They would risk their lives in the sea to go to Europe while knowing they would be discriminated against, rather than seeking work at home. They have no home anymore. This is the secret of the dictatorship’s victory. People have become extras, machines to applaud or to file a piece of paper into a trash-ballot box during the electoral masquerade. The media, whose function is to sound the alarm when things go wrong, have become an extension of the authority and a body of cheap propaganda. They strive to praise the providential prince who receives daily testimonies of admiration from various heads of States from the 4 corners of the globe. And he spends the rest of his time waiting for a disaster to happen in a friend or distant country to send his condolences. Ridicule does not kill; the national media continue to be examples of clowning on which we can no longer count. Fortunately, almost every evil can be treated or cured. The remedy to alleviate the stupidity of national media is the use of Internet communication to avoid sinking into total degradation. But that also requires a certain amount of courage and skills to escape the persecution of Internet users, as dictatorships are in a state of wakefulness. Yet, there is no need to despair because light will always emerge from darkness.