The End is Nigh - Getting Real About Multiply

 

Could Bloggers Be Partisan? New Shock Report

It not only powerful voices on the international stage like US senator Jay Rockefeller that want to close the Blogoshpere down, there are increasingly diverse attacks on social media from all quarters the corporate infotainment industry has launched a counter offensive. Turning the blogging social media platform Multiply into a far eastern thrift store should I think be seen as indicative of a corporate backlash. The blogosphere honeymoon is now over. Multiply as a locus of discussion, information sharing, opinion and debate is being decommissioned as a phenomenon generally unhelpful to Greater Bilderbergia and the interests of its supporters and adherents. Of course there is nothing new in any of this, the blogosphere has been under attack since the mid noughties at least.

Back in 2009 media stories like the following began to appear:-

According to the great-grandson John D. Rockefeller, nephew of banker David Rockefeller, and former Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller the internet represents a serious threat to national security. Rockefeller is not alone in this assessment. His belief that the Internet is the “number one national hazard” to national security is shared by the former Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and Obama’s own director Admiral Dennis C. Blair.
http://crossingpointoflight.blogspot.co.uk/2009/03/rockefeller-internet-is-number-one.html 

So in the US and in other parts of the world there has been growing disquiet about social networking in general and political blogging in particular. In some places the response to the blogosphere has been direct unapologetic and sometimes brutal. In January 2007, two prominent Malaysian political bloggers, Jeff Ooi and Ahiruddin Attan, were sued by a pro-government newspaper, The New Straits Times Press (Malaysia) Berhad, Kalimullah bin Masheerul Hassan, Hishamuddin bin Aun and Brenden John a/l John Pereira over an alleged defamation. The plaintiff was supported by the Malaysian government.^[1] Following the suit, the Malaysian government proposed to "register" all bloggers in Malaysia in order to better control parties against their interest.
Back in 2006 two ethnic Chinese were imprisoned in Singapore under the country’s anti-sedition law for posting anti-Islamic remarks in their blogs.

Egyptian  blogger Kareem Amer was charged with insulting the Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and an Islamic Institution through his blog. It is the first time in the history of Egypt that a blogger was prosecuted. After a brief trial session that took place in Alexandria, the blogger was found guilty and sentenced to prison terms of three years for insulting Islam and inciting sedition, and one year for insulting Mubarak.

On 2 June 2012, the ailing Mubarak was found guilty of not putting a stop to the killing of protesters by the Egyptian security forces and sentenced to life imprisonment.^[2]
The court found Mubarak not guilty of ordering the crackdown on Egyptian protesters. All other charges against Mubarak, including profiteering and economic fraud, were dismissed. Mubarak's two sons, Habib el-Adly, and six senior police officials were all acquitted for their role in the killings of demonstrators due to lack of evidence.

Thousands of demonstrators protested the verdict in Tahrir Square, Arbein Square and Al-Qaed Ibrahim Square. So, does mean Kareem Amer was right to defame Mubarak and should be recognised as someone who contributed to the downfall of a criminal and therefore should be pardoned?.... it's not likely.

Nearer to home the reaction to bloggers has been less overt, but here in the UK mainstream media outlets including The Guardian have run a more subtle campaign. An example of what I mean appeared today (26 August 2012) in the The Guardian's sister paper,  The Observer the Sunday paper whose foreign editor, Peter Beaumont is doing his bit on behalf of the corporate media machine to cast doubt upon the value of blogging and social media compared to his own august institution. First published in 1791, it is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.

Beaumont a corporate media hack has made a living out of generating propaganda from various war zones on behalf of official information outlets he is not unsurprisingly is the winner of the George Orwell Prize which is a perfect example of doublethink if ever there was one. It is interesting that it is The Observer's foreign editor who is leading the counter offensive against the blogosphere, which is now being subtly repackaged by corporate scribblers as something alien, foreign and not very nice. http://theorwellprize.co.uk/

In an interesting double act with American born, London based science fiction writer and fellow newspaper hack Patrick Ness, a Transatlantic chap with dual nationality, together Beaumont and Ness could be said to represent NATO in print.

Accompanying a picture of a smug looking Ness having been lauded and elevated to some sort of literary giant worthy of quoting Beaumont approvingly cites Ness's view expressed at the Edinburgh world writers conference  "instead of bringing us all together in an omnipresent, multifaceted discussion, the internet instead has made sectarianism an almost default position".

I always find it interesting when people rail against 'sectarianism'  in this way, as if for example the Edinburgh conference was not 'sectarian' itself in that it showcases the corporate literati, who comprise generally of people who write things so inconsequential they cause no ripples in the status quo whatsoever, the literary celebrities and the darlings of the chattering classes, the prize winners of awards created just for them etc, etc.
 Beaumont and Ness are basically in the same business, the create narratives and develop stories according to a certain framework that keeps them in work of official scribes of the Greater Bilderbergian empire. Ness writes primarily for children and in many ways Beaumont does the same thing, at least he writes for the impressionable and trusting whatever their ages might be.

In his article Peter Beaumont observes:-

"Among the pessimists has been the US academic Cass Sunstein, who was early in proposing a more dystopian picture of how debate was being shaped online, noting a fundamental contradiction. "New technologies," Sunstein has suggested, "including the internet, make it easier for people to hear the opinions of like-minded but otherwise isolated others."

 true love

I don't feel that my blogs have been uncritically accepted by anyone, debates often ensue. I have been flamed plenty of times and I don't mind it, until it becomes boring that is, I do like to maintain a modicum of decorum on my site, but generally I engage with trolls and critics because they provide me with opportunities to develop my themes and to have a little fun into the bargain, at least until the novelty wears off.

Mr Sunstein a very good friend of Barack Obama and is currently is the Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration. As the winner of the George Orwell Prize one might think that Beaumont would have made the connection to what here looks like the Washington equivalent of the Ministry of Love... after all it is the place where Winston Smith worked, which should have rung some bells I'd have thought, but no such luck it seems.

Beaumont writes in his piece today:-

Part of Patrick Ness's argument was that the often brutal nature of the online world has started to impose a culture of self-censorship as some have sought to avoid inevitable flame wars......

 Well I have answered that above I don't think there have been any damaging flame wars at my site and I certainly cannot be accused of self censorship I don't think. I have never flamed anybody myself. I never visit sites simply to attack or abuse them, because for one thing I would not want the authors to feel the same sense of satisfaction I feel by drawing their fire, it means the post is hitting its spots, it is to me therefore a sign of success and so why would I give that to an ideological opponent? Ness misunderstands the medium I think and so does Beaumont who goes on to opine.


There is a final issue, too familiar from my experience, that is a very natural desire when the language of debate is so toxic and aggressive – to avoid or disengage from all those places where one is likely to encounter abusive remarks, even if that abuse is motivated by a genuine passion. All of which leads to the most difficult question. How do those media organisations fashion a retooling of the online environment and, indeed, is it desirable?

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/26/peter-beaumont-internet-ruining-politics

"Toxic and aggressive" is the most, well toxic and aggressive way I have seen the blogosphere described in a long time. I don't know what blog sites Peter Beaumont visits, but clearly - like the vast majority of humanity - not mine.

I can live with that though so long as he doesn't want to earn his crust by taking scatter-gun pot shots at my blog and subjecting my posts to his sweeping generalisations and prejudices.....obviously it is Beaumont's job to construct tangible enemies and craft just wars on behalf of those who pay him....nobody pays me so I can say more or less what I like.

You can see the underlying reasons for Peter Beaumont's scepticism though when all is said and done, pure sour grapes could be what is driving this backlash. The circulation of the parent paper The Guardian ten years ago was 411,386 and now it's less than 216,000. The Observer in 2002 had a Sunday circulation of 440,090 and in 2012 it is now down to 253,022. How could the industry lose so much income and prestige in such a short time and not fight back?  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_the_United_Kingdom_by_circulation

I think we should look out for stories of people damaged by blogging, socially, emotionally, psychologically laid low by participating in online forums and so on. A whole new industry will grow up to wean us off communicating with anyone outside a restricted and blinkered local group of slavering debt slaves and dedicated supporters of government wrong or even wronger.

The demise of Multiply must I think be seen in the light of a more widespread backlash against bloggers and the internet by those vested interests it has damaged and that assumption of authority hacks used to have in the bad old days.Whatever the cyber-revisionists say in their increasingly unread newspaper articles or addresses to the luvies of the literary celebrity culture, we're not giving up that easy.

If you read what Peter Beaumont says in his article all of it could be applied to the print media and himself just as much as his target of non celebrity writers and bloggers on here. Information is ALWAYS political it is NEVER value free and whereby the values of bloggers are usually explicitly stated not so Peter Beaumont, Patrick Ness, Cass Sunstein or Jack Madrid, its the honesty they can't stomach not the partisan communications because my views would never get a look in at the Guardian or the Observer, but my readership has increased over the period theirs has fallen, so why would we care what the celebs and propagandists think about what we write any more than they should take note of what we say about the stuff they write?