Fun with AUI-S (Freedom of Speech)

by Astios 

Freedom of Speech is like pornography. It is hard to define, but you know it, when you need it. In a place like AUI-S, you hear a lot about it but you don't see it. For a Composition teacher it is a dependent phrase, while for a Geography teacher, it is the only thing that can't be found on the map of Iraq. 

In Kurdistan, for example, there is always freedom of speech. However, there is also another freedom: Freedom of cutting tongues. So you can go to the Freedom Square and shout as loud as you want, but then you have to be ready to pay the price. 

It is strange that only free people get annoyed by free speech. Slaves do not seem to care about anything said for them or against them. They know that as long as it is "speech" it doesn't hurt. Because they have not heard Shakespeare saying: 

Beneath the rule of men entirely great,

The pen is mightier than the sword.

We fortunately don't use pen anymore. It is all keyboard. The moment you make a mistake, we have the keyboard. When you carelessly spend money on useless things, we always have the keyboard. And when you bring lazy cats to the green building, we always have a the mouse. 

Freedom of Speech is not sacred here, if it was, every religion would have claimed it, as it is the case with the Holy lands. Freedom is like the smell of garlic here, people put their hands on their mouths when speak it. 

We know that freedom itself is not a funny topic at all. But it always leads to a funny society where 1 is not equal to 1 but to less than 1. So a publishing an inappropriate comment which asks for physical violence is a much bigger crime than the physical violence itself. 

For us, such treatments are only funny and nothing else. Our sense of humor helps us overcome the injustices in the society and the university. We are free to speak and others are free to threaten. The only difference is that our free speech angers them and their anger amuses us.