Friday, December 01, 2006

[freedom of speech] assault on the blogosphere gains momentum

Chicken Yoghurt has an important post on the freedom to blog and that many bloggers can’t see how they can be shut down if their host is offshore. CY refers to the Prime Minister’s senior policy adviser, his former press secretary and the director of the Press Complaints Commission and their views on what they’d like to do to the blogosphere. Also, former US Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich:

“This is a serious, long-term war,” Gingrich added, “and it will inevitably lead us to want to know what is said in every suspect place in the country. It will lead us to learn how to close down every Web site that is dangerous.”

War? Yes, it is indeed a war and you can just see the wheels turning in their minds. At the moment they can’t touch the blogosphere so they’ll soon resort to the good ’ole Hegelian thesis-antithesis, translated into layman’s terms as: 1] create a crisis 2] raise cries from the populace to solve the crisis 3] step in with your pre-packaged solution which achieves your true aim.

The blogosphere is the only place left where the long term goals of these very dangerous people who purport to lead the country can be exposed. We still have the freedom for now but the Google shutdown last evening perfectly illustrated how tenuous is our ability to communicate with each other. The plug can be pulled at any time.

2 comments:

  1. James, there are far too many of us to shut down, and I think we regulate ourselves very well, there is no difficulty in responding/disagreeing, it's a totally free press - except if you are in China, I have no idea if there is any censorship for bloggers in the Russian Federation.

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  2. Yes, Ellee, we do but I don't think that's foremost in their minds in their desire to shut us down.

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