I have become so busy in the metamorphosis towards becoming a serious 'neutral' blog as opposed to a 'parody', that the return of Zentelligence to 'open access' escaped my attention. Perhaps this is a sign that we could see the return of Thanetlife soon, and even possibly Thanetonian? I could then retire from this 'blogging' business and enjoy the forthcoming summer.
What is very interesting, however, is the disappearance of Thom (Gardfahl) over at Heteromorphic Horsefeathers. Has he had the instruction from his bosses to close or is it just a 'technical' problem?
4 months ago
7 comments:
Bertie professional journalists just don’t make mistakes that cause those sort of inferences, it is how they have always fought oppressive regimes. During apartheid the reactionary newspapers In South Africa published with blank spaces, and the question that is begged here, is are we living in an oppressive regime?
Bertie I have but up a sample from the missing blog so that people can see the type of thing we have lost click here to read it
Thanks Michael. It does make one wonder if he has been told to stop.
Bertie you have to consider that if any local journalist that doesn’t tow the line is silenced or sacked so that what we read is controlled by our masters we are on a road that takes us to some very strange places indeed. And if our lords and masters can’t take a little mild humour some of those strange places may be fairly unpleasant.
I could not agree with you more, Michael. Sadly, there is precedence, with employers stifling their employees 'blogs' and last month the Government was tracking down a civil servant, having persuaded Google to close the site first.
The point about blogs is they are by their very nature opinion and comment. And if we can no longer express our opinions or comments we might as well be living under Hitler or Stalin. You can't even take a photo of the Houses of Parliament these days without some trumped-up t*sser in a uniform demanding what you're doing. If we carry on like that, those who want to stamp out democracy will have won.
I got the feeling that Thom lost interest but I wouldn't bet anything on that.
As for oppressive bosses:
The standard "best practice" from across the pond is to put a notice quite prominently that says "this is my blog the opinions expressed here are my own and not necessarily that of my employer..."
On the whole this has served to win bloggers a good number of civil court appearances. I wonder if it might apply here.
Generally blogger.com is only good if you are from a known oppressive regime otherwise you can be silenced very quickly by government.
It was partly my contact with Thom at MyBlogLog that drew me towards Thanet blogging so I hope things are not as dark as suggested.
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