Over the past month or so, I have expended a lot of time and energy searching out and going over the various blogging platforms trying to decide what would work best for me so that I could maximize what I can accomplish in a day.
For anybody who has set out on such a quest you know just how many options there are out there and how difficult it is to find information to quickly compare systems - for yourself. I found many blogging sites to be hopeless at demonstrating exactly what features they offer and what great things you can do with them.
Wordpress seems to be the platform of choice for many web publishers, but having suffered a brief sojourn with it a year ago, I do not want to go there because of the frustrations involved in getting up to speed with the code. (But I may still end up there someday if I find it offers features I can no longer live without.)
So for the moment and possibly for a long time to come, here on Blogger I can quickly share articles and editorial (with a 'comments' feature that works! Ugh. Another story.) My main site is great because I can create and add to pages such as my Links and Resources on Gaza, Israel and Palestine.
Hovering over-all is the hope that I can somehow make a living with my independent editorial writing. Once upon a time I wrote cozy pieces about family life. Some of those got published. As my horizons broadened and I began to develop a need to express my political convictions though, things changed.
I began to write opinion articles that expressed the conviction that mankind needs to maintain the integrity of the living earth's genetic codes; I began to defend the rights of the suffering underclasses of the world; I argued for justice equaling peace in the Middle East.
These ideas, ideas I felt were basic and so obvious when one looked at the facts, I was unhappily to learn ran against the grain of corporate media. Letters of mine were published to be sure, some of them. But such views were not welcome in articles - not even on Op Ed pages, where the idea in theory is to publish opinion opposite the majority view of the editorial board or owner(s).
Now, if there was a healthy diversity otherwise of views in the Main Stream Media (MSM), that would be one thing. But over the course of the last twenty-five years things have changed for the worse in a multitude of ways.
Access to information and lively debate over the facts has withered on the democratic vine. I am able to draw a direct line between this and unfettered war. Our minds have been muzzled. It is a very dangerous thing.
So I write. And I try to make connections and find ways to get myself out there which is tough, because you don't want to be found guilty of the capital offense of self-promotion. (How any business got ahead without promoting itself I have no earthly idea.)
I am a proud member of the Alternative Media (aka Alt. Media or Indy Media.) Alt. Media is independent, it is diverse, and it works hard at finding creative ways of reaching you. Feed it. If having an independent media and a healthy democracy is important to you, if you can afford it, those donate buttons are there on Alt. Media pages for a reason. Because we need your support.
Visit often. Come see me at The McLoughlin Post, too.
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