I have some sad news and I hope it does not stand as a permanent development. Nora at Spanish Pundit has at least temporarily suspended her blogging. She seems to express some disappointment that the blogosphere is not reaching a wider audience and that attacks upon freedom of expression through blogging appear to be gaining ground worldwide. Nora has created a Spanish language Google group to monitor and publicize these threats and she has promised to continue her work there, which is only a small piece of good news.
It may be worth noting that Nora has expressed this frustration in the wake of her incredulous observations of the treatment of terrorist leader Abu Qutada, a Muslim cleric with known links to Al Qaeda, who was recently released on bail in Great Britain after winning an extradition fight to prevent his deportation to Jordan, and on top of that the recent death of a Spanish judge who was expected to rule against the Zapatero government on key cases involving homsexual marriage, Catalonian rights, and more. I also think it deserves mentioning here that some key individuals I am fond of referring to as "freedom bloggers" have been hit with hacking attacks recently, including Martha Colmenares, whose site was out of action for over two weeks. Nora is very well aware of these attacks and I think it evidently is taking a toll, since the resigned tone of her advisement that she is in hiatus for now states very clearly that she is not enthusiastic about the prospects for winning this struggle for free expression through blogging.
I will be leaving a comment for Nora at her post, but I would just like to state some words of encouragement here as well. Nora is among that very select group of bloggers who have made the cause of securing freedom a worthwhile end, she has been an inspiration to me, and I hope she returns to active blogging because we can never have enough spokeswomen of her character and stature.
StJacques
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Attacks on Freedom Bloggers Now Taking a Toll: Spanish Pundit in Temporary Hiatus
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1 comment:
Thanks, StJacques, for your post. It has been a great surprise to me that you, of all people, write something as touching as this post is.
Well, my problem is that I see that once and again firstly, there are very important news which do not reach a wide audience, but are only known by some bloggers and the rest of the people do not get them or just are not interested in them at all. And secondly, that I see both the idiocy and the lack of consideration for the common good and for their citizens of most politicians.
Abu Qutada's release is a blow for me but mainly because he is actually a terrorist mind -the worst, as they encourage and give moral justification and ideological basis to terrorism-, living in a 800,000€ apartment and will be given 8,000€ from Social Security because "he is unable to work". And then any human being, is monitored from street cameras, while the Government loses his files, his data,... and asks afterwards for a much longer period to interrogate him without having to charge him.
Soooo, why aren't you using the maximum strength against THIS man who is ACTUALLY a terrorist, instead of implementing the legislation with measures whose legality is somewhat difficult to understand?
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