Bloggers - Denounce But Don't Threaten

If a blogger is free to engage in near-harrassment activity, can other bloggers engage in similar actiivity?

Quebec court rejects bid to restrain blogger

Michael Rosenberg, a member of the Montreal Hasidic community, sought a restraining order against blogger Pierre Lacerte, claiming he is harassing his family...blogger Pierre Lacerte is certainly a nuisance. A court this week described him as “a peculiar personality. He is excessive, meticulous, passionate. He is no picnic.”

But Judge Manon Ouimet of Quebec Court concluded that Mr. Lacerte’s campaign to expose what he calls the “unjustified political influence” of Montreal’s Hasidim was insufficient to justify an order under the Criminal Code that he keep the peace.

“The exercise, however abundant, of the defendant’s right to expression on his blog has a specific aim that does not threaten the personal safety of the plaintiffs,” Judge Ouimet ruled Monday. “It is not to intimidate, threaten or harass them that he is interested in them.”

...Mr. Rosenberg testified that Mr. Lacerte has harassed him since 2005, taking hundreds of photos of him or his car when it is double-parked in front of the synagogue. He took exception to being mocked and called the “half-billion-dollar man” on Mr. Lacerte’s blog and testified that he felt singled out because of his religion.

...“He is convinced that the city demonstrated unjustified complacency in both the illegal work on the synagogue and the illegal parking because [Mr.] Rosenberg is a rich and powerful man, and the authorities eat from his hand,” Judge Ouimet wrote.

She concluded: “The defendant asserts that he has absolutely nothing against Jews. He criticizes certain behaviour of Outremont’s orthodox Jewish community, and he decided to denounce what he considers to be abuses.”

...Mr. Lacerte said in an interview that he has nothing to apologize for. His quarrel is not with Jews, he said, only with the “fundamentalist” Hasidim. “They refuse all contact. They even refuse the bylaws if they do not suit them,” he said. “That is what is disturbing.”

Lacerte's blog is here.

Denounce at will. Criticize. Don't threaten.

Be lawful.

^

Finally, An Arab Palestinian I Can Support

No, not because of his beliefs but because of his right to express them:-

West Bank: Blogger Arrested Over Posts Seen as Heresy for Satirizing Koran

An atheist blogger whose postings satirizing the Koran set off an uproar in the Arab world has been arrested by the Palestinian authorities and faces a possible life sentence if convicted of heresy, officials said. The blogger, Walid Husayin, 26, a barber from Qalqilya, is suspected of posting atheistic rants on English and Arabic blogs and creating three Facebook groups where he spoofed the Koran, including by declaring himself God and ordering his followers to smoke marijuana. Mr. Husayin has been detained but not charged, a Palestinian security spokesman said.

^

The Bloggers Deep Within

Journalism is changing.

Not only has the NYTimes, via Ethan Bronner, finally come around to dealing with the Gaza Mall (see below) but mainstream media is embedding in its website stories links not only to definitions but to other bloggers as well.

Here is an excerpt from the NYT Gaza Mall piece:-

For Hamas, and for the Hamas-linked group of local investors behind the enterprise, the two-story mall, with its central air-conditioning and underground parking, has deep symbolic value. It is proof, they say, that despite the Israeli and Egyptian effort to isolate this Palestinian coastal strip, it can develop and thrive. Let the message go out: We will not be defeated.

But symbols are a risky business, and Israel’s fiercest defenders have seized upon the mall for their own purposes as well. Wielding glossy photographs of the new shops, they ask: Is this the land of deprivation that you have heard about? How did they build a mall if no building materials are permitted into Gaza? How badly off can a place be that has just opened up a luxury mall? Those aid flotillas are sailing to the wrong place, they say.

There's Tom Gross in there.

A Danny Ayalon op-ed.

A Jacob Shrybman collection of photographs.

Bloggers deep within a New York Times story.

And interestingly:

“Gaza is not poor in the way outsiders think,” said Nida Wishah, a 22-year-old information technology student who was at the mall one recent afternoon. “You can’t compare our poverty with that of Africa.”

Modest though it is, the mall is a pleasant and cheerful complex, especially for Gaza. Tens of thousands of people have been passing through it, enjoying the air-conditioning, the window shopping and the recent arrival of many Israeli brands...

“This is for the elite,” Mr. Abu Abdu said. “The money you see here belongs to a very few people.”...“It feels civilized here,” said Othman Turkman, 26, who works in conflict resolution and was comparison shopping. “It’s not for everyone, of course.

So, how many "elite" are there?

And how many civilized?


(Kippah tip: SoccerDad)
- - -

Will I Become A Wikipedia Editor?

Here's Naftali Bennet speaking at the workshop for Wikipedia editors last night that I attended:

And here's, in part, how Ha-Ha-Haaretz reported it:

The right's latest weapon: 'Zionist editing' on Wikipedia

...Now the Yesha Council of settlements and another right-wing group, Israel Sheli, are embarking on a Wikipedia battle: Zionist editing on the Web-based encyclopedia. The first course was held yesterday in Jerusalem.

"The idea is not to make Wikipedia rightist but for it to include our point of view," said Naftali Bennett, the director of the Yesha Council.

...The course was designed to teach how to register for, contribute to and edit for Wikipedia.

The organizers' aim was twofold: to affect Israeli public opinion by having people who share their ideological viewpoint take part in writing and editing for the Hebrew version, and to write in English so Israel's image can be bolstered abroad.

...According to Einat Bornstein, another participant in the course, "I came here to have an impact. I think people are afraid to write rightist responses."...

I am still challenged by technology so I am not sure how I will act on this and I think much more demonstrations of how to edit, tips, special notations, etc. could have been included in last night's workshop.

Nevertheless, you can't have plurality and neutrality without balance and multiplicity of editors.

=============

UPDATE

The NYTimes "Lede" blog mentions the tutorial.

Will I Ever Be An Advanced Blogger

I attended a confab of bloggers today.

I looked at the blogger to my right and this is what I saw:


A laptop; a local Blackberry with Internet link-up; a beeper; a cellphone; and a few other elements.

The blogger not only took notes but even sent a blog post out during the time we sat there.

Oiy is me.

I am technically-challenged.


P.S. The blogger is invited to identify himself as I didn't specifically ask permission to reveal that.


- - -

It's Tough Sometimes Being A Blogger

But it can be fun and rewarding.

AussieDave and myself met with some Canadian bloggers at Bruno Restaurant at Tel Aviv's Azriely Building. We discussed experiences, methods, the future and even some technical stuff which I am not very good at. It was quite a good discussion and even brainstorming session.

While not all exactly of the same ideological stripe, well, almost, nevertheless, it was great exchanging ideas and I am grateful for the opportunity provided.

Here's most of the group (*) - some requested not to be photographed and AussieDave photoshopped himself - :

Jonathan, Kate, Kathy, me, AussieDave -

Kathy and Arnie engaged in important work:

Yes, the food was very real, not virtual. The restaurant was Bruno:



That's mixed grill cuts on a bed of sweet potato with sauteed onions and mushrooms:



And that's the entrecote steak on a bed of potatoes:

And this was the in-between course, just so we would get to hungry while waiting for the main course after the first course of garlic bread, grilled eggplant in tehina sauce, salads, humus, etc. - some meat condiments grilled in a roll with fruit (banana, kiwi, cherry, mango) and honey:

And yes, there was wine.

(*)

The group:

Kathy Shaidle
Kathy Shaidle's first poetry collection was shortlisted for Canada's most prestigious literary prize. A blogging pioneer, she's written about religion, politics and pop culture at her site since 2000. Her new book, The Tyranny of Nice, is a critique of political correctness and state censorship. Author Mark Steyn has called Kathy Shaidle "one of the great virtuoso polemicists of our day."

Kate McMillan
Kate is freelance commercial artist by profession, from a town of about 900 in the centre of the Canadian prairies. Owner of the high traffic conservative blog, SmallDeadAnimals

Arnie Lemaire
Arnie is a Canadian citizen born in the province of Quebec. He now resides in the city of Toronto and is employed in sales and marketing. Arnie is married to Kathy Shaidle, and they are the proud servants of a cat named Pip. His interests range from computer animation to national and international politics, and he is publisher of the politically oriented blog Blazingcatfur

Jonathan Narvey
Jonathon Narvey is a Vancouver-based communications specialist and freelance writer. He has contributed articles and columns to print and online media publications such as The Vancouver Sun, National Post, Granville Magazine, B.C. Business, and other publications both in print and online. He writes about politics, current events, environmental sustainability, technology, and life on Canada's west coast.
He blogs at New Media.
________________

And after leaving the restaurant, I spotted the "herd instict" phenomenon of the 'average Israeli' - the line of those waiting to get into the new H&M store:

Blogging And (And As) Journalism

From an interview with Charles Johnson, who disconnected me from his blog after two people began jumping on me, and it was claimed that I was stirring things up:

Little Green Footballs has helped break some big stories, do you think there’s room for bloggers to play a role not just as opinion-makers but as investigative journalists as well?

Yes, definitely. Bloggers with significant followings can call on the “group expertise” factor as well, to find out information and get perspectives from many angles. There’s a downside too, though — because bloggers on the fringes may try to make a name for themselves by floating poorly investigated or even false stories. We saw this recently in the story about Barack Obama’s supposed “college thesis,” a story with no credibility that originated at a blog known for posting unlabeled hoaxes, that was picked up and reported by Michael Ledeen and Rush Limbaugh.

Just as with news organizations, there are some bloggers that are more credible than others. Usually, they’re the ones who’ve built an audience and a reputation by being scrupulous about fact checking, and by quickly admitting and correcting errors.

Do you think the blogosphere has had a net positive effect on journalism at large?

One way to answer that: five years ago, not a single newspaper or broadcast journalism website had a blog. Now they all do. The rapid success of the format argues pretty convincingly that it’s a positive development — although it’s probably also contributed to the financial downturn for print and broadcast journalism as well.

As with most human endeavors, it’s a mixed blessing, because the rapid dissemination of information through blogs, and the possibility of remaining anonymous, also enables the spread of conspiracy theories and other fringe ideas. But on balance I believe the decentralization of reporting and journalism has been a very positive development for the free flow of information — one of the most important functions of our modern technological society.

A Good Reason Not To Have Ads On Your Blogs

Found here (via Fark):

Lawyer Loses Unemployment Cash Because of $1.30 in Daily Blog Income

The state of New York has cut off unemployment benefits for a 2008 law grad after she reported collecting $1.30 a day in advertising income from her blog.

The lawyer, who allowed only her first name of Karin to be used, was laid off from her job at a New York City law firm after working there only six months, Forbes reports. Karin publishes a blog called STL Meal Deals highlighting dining bargains in St. Louis, where she moved to take advantage of more affordable rent.

The agency told Karin it’s investigating her business, and she won’t get any benefits while the probe is under way, the story says. State law provides that anyone who earns less than $405, the amount paid in weekly benefits, will have their checks reduced by 25 percent.

Karin has earned about $238 from the advertising generated from Google AdSense, according to the story. She has since taken the ads off her website.

Blogging and Israel

From a review article on blogs:

...the Web has helped open up entire subjects that were once off-limits to the press. The domestic politics of US policy toward Israel is a good example. Until recently, the activities of pro-Israel lobbying groups like AIPAC were all but ignored by reporters fearful of being branded anti-Semitic or anti-Israel. Today, the Web teems with news, analysis, opinion, and polemic about US–Israel relations.

Rob Browne, a Long Island dentist, keeps track of Israel-related legislation in Congress on the left-liberal blog Daily Kos. M.J. Rosenberg, a former AIPAC staffer-turned-dove, dissects the Israel lobby's activities on Talking Points Memo. Fiercely opposing them is a battalion of Israel defenders, including Ron Kampeas, (Capital J at the JTA wire service), Michael Goldfarb (the online editor of The Weekly Standard), and — the most influential journalist/blogger on matters related to Israel — Jeffrey Goldberg (at The Atlantic).

Both sides feed off the vast amount of data available on the Web. "In the past, I wouldn't have been able to get Haaretz except by going to Hotaling's," observes Philip Weiss, author of the blog Mondoweiss, referring to the long-since-shuttered foreign newspaper shop in New York. "Now I can get it, and the entire Israeli and Arab press, online." Weiss is one of several friends I've seen flourish online after enduring years of frustration writing for magazines. With its unrelenting criticism of Israel, his site has angered even some of his fellow doves, but it has given voice to a strain of opinion that in the past had few chances of being heard. In June, Weiss, with $8,000 in reader donations, traveled to Gaza with an antiwar group, and for several days he filed reports on his encounters with students, aid workers, and Hamas officials.

New JPost Blog Post

Here.

A Justification for Blogging

This comment just came in on a post from a while back, not a political post, not a humorous post, just a post of personal nostalgia but it seemed I scored well:

Thank you for creating this site. My grandmother died in 2000, and while scanning our family photos for the rest of my clan, I found several photos that are labelled "Unity House, 1968", and a few with my Grandmother on her last day in a factory in 1971.

I was born in '67 and way too young to know what any of this meant and never had real opportunity to ask; so knowing what the reference to the photos means is pricless to me.

BBC Corrects Botched Headline

I blogged about a poorly-worded headline at a BBC story.

Well, they fixed it.

The headline now reads:

Israelis shoot armed woman dead

Blogging works.


P.S. In case you're wondering how they could get that headline wrongly worded, well, they had it as:

Israelis shoot dead armed woman

Only the British.

So, You Want to Blog?

Across the globe, 184 million people have started a blog and over three-quarters of active Internet users read blogs. Technorati's annual 'State of the Blogosphere' report reveals the latest figures behind blogging in a week-long series of releases.

The blogosphere is overflowing with content with almost a million blog posts a day. In the U.S. alone, 77.7 million people visit blogs of which two-thirds are written by males, half of them aged 18 - 34.

...said Technorati's chief executive Richard Jalichandra, via VentureBeat. 'Blogs are media. That is the difference now. They are as relevant as the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. The blogger with 5,000 readers may be just as credible a source of information for those 5,000 people as anyone else.'

According to Technorati's report, a blogger can earn around USD 75,000 (EUR 50,800) a year with a unique audience of 100,000. The mean annual revenue from blogging, however, is somewhat more sobering at just USD 6,000 which isn't too bad when annual investment in a blog costs, on average, USD 1,800.

Source

New Term

Blogress.

Found over at Taranto.

As in "Blogress Michelle Malkin notes that Biden also told Couric..."

Seems that last year there was a blogress competition.

But besides meaning "major, influential, powerful and successful female blogger", it can also mean a blogging convention, like in "congress" or is it "tigress"?

The JB Conference Video (with a timer)

If you go here, you can view the video recording of the Jewish Bloggers Convention and if you jump to 2:26:30, you'll see the start of the Waffle Raffle - I won.

And at 3:22:10 you'll catch my panel presentation.



And more pics here

Like this one

The Jewish Bloggers' Conference - Medad's Three Ms

It's late but I can't not post something. So, here's my badge (*):-



And first impressions:

a. Kudos to the organizers, the sponsors, the guests and the crowd of some 200 in the hall and, at the height of the on-line broadcast, another 1300 viewers.

b. food was GREAT. real good cold cuts and lots of. salads and desert. but, next time, some normal tea, please? i'm not a newager.

c. very good bunch of people on the panels and in the hall.

d. everybody spoke well although Bibi spoke for a bit too long, at least within the context of the program.

e. the Foreign Ministry person had a good point about branding (even if Moshe Burt insisted and insisted that Israel is a Jewish state) and it was good that the idea was presented, even if a bit depressing regarding the knowledge of Israel displayed among regular people but she didn't fully succeed in connecting it to bloggers and the blogosphere.

f. I won the waffle maker!!! (another piece of technology I don't know how to run) Now, in my presentation, I noted that behind every married blogger is a spouse, waiting quite impatiently for his/her turn at the computer.

Then I outlined the "Medad's Three Ms":

bloggers must seek to successfully Magnetize, that is, we must draw readers to our messages.

bloggers must Motivate, that is, send out strong positive messages and vibes

and bloggers must Mobilize, that is, there is an activist purpose and goal even for those whose blogs are more personal rather than political.



For next time:
1. Longer
2. Include hands-on workshops for those who are technically challenged (like yours truly).
3. Some sort of realtime hookup/video conferencing so that not only a chat room but real exchanges can take place.

And some pics and a video (more pics here):-

General Crowd View



Eats



Ma'ariv/Arvit




And a short video





-------------
(*)
I really feel bad and again, wish to stress to the NBN people, it wasn't me. Since my badge became unstuck early on, I simply stepped outside to get another. Seems, though, that someone found it and stuck it up on the wall, at the corner near the dining area. And stuck it was. They coul;dn't get it off and it might have caused damge to the paint or whatever. But it wasn't me.

Bloggers' Conference Criticised (in Haaretz, where else?)

You thought that this (see comments) was the only real criticism of the bloggers' conference?

Well, try this:-

Jewish bloggers to gather in capital

While some influential bloggers scorned the First International Jewish Bloggers Convention in Jerusalem as one-sided and agenda-driven, the organizers maintain that not only will many attend the event physically, but hundreds more will join from in front of their computer screens.

"The response has been tremendous, already 200 people signed up to attend the conference," said Danny Oberman, vice president of Israel Operations for Nefesh B'Nefesh, which is organizing the event. He added that an additional 200 bloggers have signed up on the group's Web site to view the live webcast of the August 20 meet and to join conference discussions via an Internet chat room.

Under the motto "The Power of the JBlogosphere: Taking JBlogging to the Next Level," the half-day conference will feature two panel discussions with popular Jewish bloggers and a speech by Zavi Apfelbaum, Director of Brand Management in the Foreign Ministry. Nefesh B'Nefesh also invited the panelists - "several high-profile bloggers" - to follow a group of new immigrants from North America as they prepare for and embark on their big move. Each blogger was assigned a family or an individual, whose experiences will be documented on his or her blog. As part of the deal, the bloggers will join the Nefesh B'Nefesh charter flight from New York to Tel Aviv on August 18 and have also received free return tickets.

..."The conference is an opportunity for people who are online friends through writing and reading blogs to meet in person for the first time," said Rabbi Gil Student, one of the panelists and editor of Hirhurim, a blog about religion.

...But there are also critical voices. Lisa Goldman, a Canadian-born Israeli whose blog On the Face made waves in the international press in 2006 for her coverage of the Second Lebanon War, told AngloFile that she has no interest in the conference.

"I'm more interested in the complexities of Israeli life than in blogging about aliyah-related themes," she said, adding she would have preferred a conference for Israeli bloggers where Arabs could participate, also. Furthermore, she said the conference "seems to be politically slanted," with a preponderance of bloggers who represent right-wing or center-right views. "I prefer a holistic approach," Goldman said. "I don't like agenda blogging."

Shmarya Rosenberg, whose Failed Messiah blog is critical of Orthodox Judaism, also slammed the convention. "At first glance, the conference seems stacked in favor of Orthodox bloggers with right-wing political leanings," he told AngloFile. "I think what Nefesh B'Nefesh is doing is deceitful. A true Jewish bloggers' conference would be both open to all Jewish bloggers and far more balanced."

...Nefesh B'Nefesh denies any bias in its selection process. "The First International Jewish Bloggers Convention is open to the entire Jewish world," the group's director of communications, Yael Katsman, said yesterday. "All official bloggers are welcome and invited to join. We don't have a prerequisite - if you're Orthodox or not, if you are on the right or left-wing, it doesn't matter."

...David Bogner, one of the panelists and author of Treppenwitz, a blog about the "specialness" of everyday life in Israel, might agree that the conference lineup is ideologically skewed, but is not bothered by that. "Who wants to go listen to some carefully hand-picked panel discussion where there are exactly equal numbers of right-wing, left-wing, girls, boys, religious, secular Sephardi, Ashkenazi - there's no end to that kind of madness," he said. "I have the sense the organizers of the conference were going for pro-Israel, pro-aliyah bloggers who also get lots of traffic. Unfortunately, that demographic seems to skew somewhat right-wing religious - just as the actual aliyah statistics do."

...The author of the Modern Orthodox religion blog Emes VeEmunah, Rabbi Harry Maryles, of Chicago...does have a criticism: "One issue that may not be on the agenda that I would like to see discussed is how to increase our advertising revenue," he wrote in an e-mail to AngloFile. "I spend hours a day on my blog and have virtually no income from it. The money I make from the two Web ads I have barely pays for my monthly DSL [high-speed Internet connection] fees."

How True (On Blogging)

Picking up the phone at 4:30 in the afternoon, Shmarya Rosenberg answered in a voice still bleary from sleep. He explained that he was just napping after having blogged the whole night, and most of the morning.

"It's hard to do one of these blogs," Rosenberg said. "It owns you. It's terrible. If I had any idea four years ago that it was going to do this, I don't think I could've started it."

Source.


How true.

True

On Blogging

Many bloggers really don't write much at all. They are more like impresarios, curators, or editors, picking and choosing things they find on line, occasionally slapping on a funny headline or adding a snarky (read: snotty and catty) comment. Some days, the only original writing you see on a blog is the equivalent of "Read this.... Take a look.... But, seriously, this is lame.... Can you believe this?"

And there's a lot more in this review.