Bloggers of the world unite!
If you’re not a blogger or webmaster yourself, you may not know that the list of other blogs that you see on many sites, including this one, is a political statement. Who is listed (i.e. linked), and how many are listed, are decisions that are a factor of status, empowerment and community.
There was another story just yesterday about a repressive government (China, again, still) trying to block access to or parts of the Internet to its people.
It’s a fitting day to note this ignoble and ever-increasing practice (which echoes my post from the other day about the rise of sham democracies as reported by Human Rights Watch), because it’s Blogroll Amnesty Day, when the politics of blogrolling comes front and center on blogs that take politics, and the Internet, very seriously.
For as much info about this “virtual” holiday as you can possibly handle, see this weekend's many posts about it at Skippy, the Bush Kangaroo.
Since I am a proud member of the Netroots, and a firm believer in the Net's liberating influence, I strongly support Blogtopia’s (term coined by Skippy) very own holiday of interdependence.
A personal note about the blogroll on Peace Arena: I keep changing blog platforms and urls, and as a result my current blogroll has suffered. I’ve needed to work on it, and today would otherwise prompt me to do so, but I have an overdue freelance job I’m working on, so don’t have time until that’s done. So I’ll keep my B.A.D. door open until then, so if you want to be listed when I do have time, just add your link as a comment to this post. I do reserve the right to give leftwing Okie blogs favored placement, but really that’s such a short list, who’s gonna mind?
Now, I’m going to steal a couple of minutes from moneymaking to get into some blogrolls on some blogs higher up the blog ecosystem (which is pretty much all of them).
Okay, so I’m going to suggest you visit the following:
JMBzine – this isn’t a smaller blog, but it’s done by a friend and colleague who is really a great guy and I wouldn’t want to leave him off the list.
The Practical Progressive – another Okie
<a href=”http://peacearena.org”>Peace Arena</a>