Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Attack On Blogging Tories

Stephen Taylor of Blogging Tories has written an eloquent response to the attack on his news aggregator site, (see my earlier comment on this; Stupid Complaint,) which was launched by disgruntled ex-Conservatives claiming he was a front for the Conservative Party and thus in violation of the Elections Act. What stupidity.

Blogging Tories being charged with political manipulation?

Jason Cherniak who runs the Liblog also defended the BT and Stephen. As should anyone who runs a blog association or aggregator for blogs. Such as; Progressive Bloggers, Blogging Dippers, Green Blogs, Alberta, Ontario, Saskatchewan, B.C. blogs, etc. etc.

This is an affront to free speech. None of us get paid to do this. And we sure as heck are not frontmen for the political parties we support or give critical support too.

With the exception of some bloggers like Paul Wells, Warren Kinsella, Colby Cosh, etc. who are professional journalists and writers whose blogging is incidental to their work. The rest of us do this with no renumeration just the fleeting fame of being mentioned in the press occasionally. Or asked to blog for them.

The rest of us blog for the sake of blogging. For the same reasons I have been doing webpages for years, and running news aggregators by hand, hardcoding stories in HTML,such as Canada and Alberta Labour News. Which are now defunct, too much work and they served their purpose between 1997 and 2000.

I now find it easier to add Canadian labour news to LabourStart. Which is an amazing project of Eric Lee, who does get paid to do it, but relies on hundreds of volunteers to maintain it.

This attack on the BT aggregator and Stephen is despicable, he said in his best Sylvester the Cat imitation complete with spittle.

It offends my Libertarian values and principles, which are Canadian values. As someone keeps reminding us during this election.





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2 comments:

Robert McClelland said...

I fail to see why you're concerned for the treatment these pricks are now receiving from someone they smeared for no other reason than that person dared speak out against their party leader. The conservatives need to be taught the lesson that they will not be given free reign to swiftboat people who disagree with them.

EUGENE PLAWIUK said...

Robert for the same reason if you were slandered this way, despite all the nutbars you allow on your comments, and if Blogging Dippers was attacked for being a front for the NDP. Stephen has always been reasonable, unlike some of those who belong to his site. And for that matter I consider some of the Liberal bloggers at Cherniaks Liblog as just as offensive.