What is blogging is free?

"The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas".  A. Whitney Griswold

Blogging is free is a simple idea.  It is people and communities sharing experiences and ideas on the internet.  The internet is self-evidently just another way of communicating - and how well we do that is really down to how much we want to connect with other people.  Big business, financial institutions and governments have already saturated mass communication with their priorities, better known as marketing and propoganda.  As Noam Chomsky said "propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state."   Like a frog being boiled in water we seem to be fulfilling Dresden James's prediction that "the ideal tyranny is that which is ignorantly self-administered by its victims. The most perfect slaves are, therefore, those which blissfully and unawaredly enslave themselves."

"As the most participatory form of mass speech yet developed, the Internet deserves the highest protection from government intrusion." Judge Dalzell.

Many now believe that the world presented to us daily by newspapers and politicians isn't even close to a picture of the real world at all.  Whereas the truth presented by individuals writing and speaking about their own communities and experiences has the potential to be more meaningful and valuable to us.  Stating the obvious?  "We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men". George Orwell

Leaving our society in the hands of other people, particularly those who essentially use it and us for profit, is not working.  Societies are becoming poorer and less equal by the day, across the world.  And the only real thing is for people to start building again from where they are.  Building communities, friendships, supporting one another - all that brotherly love and peace stuff we were persuaded meant so little. 

We have "a responsibility to speak the truth and to expose lies". Noam Chomsky

Dame Street Occupy Movement

So how does blogging is free intend to do anything about this?  Well, it is adding another voice to two things. 

Passing the word around
One, simply to report what people are doing - blog about successes and efforts by citizens to build the new republic, as Michael D has called it.  Tweet and blog about the successes of  addiction support groups or bee keeping societies or parent groups or Local Exchange Trading Schemes, so people hear about them and can support or learn from or just like what others are doing.  Report the efforts of people like the Occupy movement and Claiming our Future.  Many are doing this already, and probably better, but another voice can't do any harm?

Bee Yourself

Web design and social media

Secondly, to bring the tools of web design and social media to those groups and individuals, if it helps.  Promote blogging and the use of websites to promote and connect community groups, charities and campaigns with each other and with the community at large.  Market traders, charities, sports groups, allotments, campaigners. You name it.  And small businesses who are making a living by offering a service to the community.  If they want a website or to use social media but don't know how, blogging is free will point them to tools and resources that might help them to do it easily and affordably.  

"Technology is neither good nor bad, nor even neutral. Technology is one part of the complex of relationships that people form with each other and the world around them." Samuel Collins

That's it.  Blogging is Free.

"Just as the strength of the Internet is chaos, so the strength of our liberty depends upon the chaos and cacophony of ...unfettered speech." Judge Dalzell,

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For advice or more information about getting a website please email bloggingisfree@gmail.com

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