Comments (3)

By Les Scammell, September 6, 2009 3:43 pm

That may be a strange statement given the banner that will fly on this page throughout September. In all honesty – I don’t particularly care about the politics of Iran, or any other country really, even though I am a political person.

I have a serious distrust of all politicians as I feel they are not in office because they care about us, the general population. They are there to push their own agendas and often, we, the general public, suffer for that agenda.

Reports from Iran suggest the election was rigged. Perhaps it was, perhaps it wasn’t but in a way, tell me any election that isn’t rigged. Here in Australia we have compulsory voting. I didn’t like any of the candidates standing at the last election, yet I had to vote for one of them. Is that not some form of electoral rigging?

One of the arguments used to prove the Iranian election was rigged was that government opponents even lost in their home towns. Referring again to Australian politics, former Prime Minister John Howard became Australia’s only Prime Minister to lose his seat in office at an election. It does happen.

So why this post and why the banner? It matters not the politics nor the country. Where I will stand up and have a say is when free speech is denied. China and Burma have been classic cases of restrictions in free speech particularly when it comes to the blogosphere. Free speech is the life blood of blogging and I will always stand up for our freedom. I was struck by two paragraphs of a post by Andrew Sullivan on the Daily Dish:

“The forces of democracy have marshalled in Iran for accountability, transparency and fairness. Wherever they marshall, we should stand with them, especially in the blogosphere, where our Iranian brothers and sisters built the foundation for this moment.”

Putting aside the philosophy of democracy. The point that stands out for me is the use of the blogosphere to form a movement because this leads into a second paragraph later in the post:

“Ever since I penned The Medium Is the Middleman: For a Revolution Against Media, I’ve been waiting for this moment, which I predicted, twelve years ago, would come: a great day when the corporate media got pushed out of the way by authentic media from below. What is occurring worldwide, with the Iranian crisis as catalyst, is the emergence of the very kind of media from below that the human race – particularly the working class and the poor – so desperately needs.”

The media that everyone has access to is blogging. Whether you’re a multi-millionaire or the poorest person around, if you can access a computer and the internet, even in a public library, you can voice your views. In fact you can do it almost completely anonymously. Of course I don’t support blogging that is anyway destructive on a person level or designed to malign innocent individuals, it can be an important weapon against injustice.

Add to the blogosphere the power of Twitter and other social media and you have the potential for a new political force around the world – at least – a huge voice.

I don’t care about the politics in Iran, or China, or anywhere else. I do care about the rights of individuals to have the freedom to voice their opinions – DO YOU?

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By Les Scammell, September 6, 2009 10:58 am

I received an email recently inviting me to add my site to a new directory. This directory is geo targeted directory which, although my humble blog doesn’t target any particular part of world, is not new in theory still interested me. the directory is aimed at blogs, businesses, and Twitterers.

Let’s face it, a directory listing is a directory listing when it comes to links. The directory goes by the name LoadedWeb – not exactly an inspiring name for a geo-targeted directory.

Listing your site is easy and can be done in just a few steps. Entries are hand edited to ensure they are listed in the right categories and are not sites that could cause issues (gambling, porn etc). photo credit: Katey Nicosia

Whilst this is just another directory, it is probably well worth listing your site whilst it is still young and not overblown. If it does get traffic then you may well see some flowing through to your site. The sites homepage already has a PR of 5 so it has got plenty of links flowing to it.

Whether or not any of that juice comes back is another matter. According to the information provided when you first list your site, a banner placed on your site, similar to that tiny little one in my sidebar, will result in a do-follow link. Time will tell.