Hiding from "the Man"

Hello and welcome to the new, improved and (somewhat) undercover Fenblog. Why a new URL you may ask? Well, check out the message that we received from the "Home Office" in Bucharest today:


EMA Policy on Blogs and Websites. The EMA region has announced a new regional policy on blogs and websites. The key features of the new policy are:

• Vols (sic) must provide the country director with the URL (address)
• Vols (sic) must discuss the nature and content of their blog with CD
• CD will encourage Vols (sic) to require a password for access to blog

(CD does not have to be given password)

• CD/Program/CDU staff must monitor blogs regularly, (at least 3 times per month); position descriptions will be modified to include these responsibilities.

This policy has gone into effect, so Volunteers must adhere to it immediately.


Sorry, but I just can't do this. I could go on and on as to the reasons why, but I think that you, loyal reader, could manage a guess as to why. I protest this policy out of principal. So, I'm "in hiding" right now, hoping that Big Brother doesn't find me. If they do, I'll have to put the blog on hiatus until I finish. After that, I can open 'er back up without any potential repercussions.

All of of this is sad really. I find it to be supremely ironic that I am here in Romania (a country victimized for 40 years by a brutal domestic communist spy system), supposedly representing ideals that fundamentally go against this policy that is being implemented. I was encouraged to teach '1984' to my students last year and did so. I was then congratulated for successfully accomplishing this task. Something is seriously wrong with the picture here folks.

Washington does not want people, especially applicants and/or nominees, to know the realities of our lives around the world as we endure the hardships that come with working in developing nations. Simply put, somebody's trying to cover their ass and is willing to go to such unlawful lengths to do so. Technology is ruining their game.

I didn't want to believe it before, but we all (my colleagues around the world and I) truly are tools of American foreign policy. Contrary to what they want the public to believe, our lives are not all roses, far from it. I, for one, am not going to pretend that it is anything but what it it truly is. After all, doesn't the American taxpayer have the right to know what's going on with us? They foot the bill don't they? Don't I have the right to express myself freely and without consequence? It all stinks to high heaven.

As a result of my professional experience, I have the good fortune of knowing many people in the legal realm. Some at big firms, some work for the govt. and some are in academia. All are at the top of their respective fields. Here's a little excerpt from an e-mail I received from someone close to me, who happened to speak with a law professor and former general counsel for the organization I currently work for:

"he said that in his opinion such a policy is a prior restraint and is therefore unconstitutional. I won't get into what prior restraints are, but let me just say that courts are VERY opposed to them. He says that what they should do is simply nothing, and if their attention is ever brought to a truly inappropriate blog, that Vol (sic) should just be fired. His example of an inappropriate blog is if the blogger was making invective, outrageous, hotheaded accusations against the host government".

Clearly this is something I've never done. Nor have I ever read anything of the sort on a colleague's blog.

So, Big Brother, if you've read this beware. You may be playing with fire.

Stay tuned for the next post, a travel journal from my winter break...