Beanstalk's SEO News Blog

I had to borrow this line from Mr. Stephen Colbert as there's just so much truthiness in the subject at hand.

I read an article on the SiteProNews.com site today and, while I'd heard the story before, it wasn't any better when it was "put to print". Jim Hedger wrote about the ordeal of Kathy Sierra, well known blogger, speaker and publisher who has had to cancel numerous speaking engagements due to the stupid, sexist and cruel actions of a few who Ms. Sierra was good enough to name.

The names will follow below but first let's get to the wrong. I won't bother getting into detail about the disgusting nature of some of the posts against here. She lists off many of them and gives a detailed account of the "event" on her blog under the post, "Death threats against bloggers are NOT "protected speech" (why I cancelled my ETech presentations)" (Note: hyperlink removed as the post has been taken down). It's a long post but worth the attention of blogger and web publishers everywhere. It is NOT OK to threaten.

And who are the culprits? Who would put out death threats and sexual assauly insinuations? None other than:

• Listics' Frank Paynter
  
• prominent marketing blogger Jeneane Sessum
  
• Raving Lunacy Allen Herrel (aka Head Lemur), and
• Chris Locke (aka Rageboy)
  

Our sympathies go out to Kathy. We hope you'll feel safe. The loss of your voice at these events would be a loss to the industry.

And so, to get back to the title, a Tip of the Hat to Kathy for having the strength to endure and blogger like Jim for getting the message out. And the Wag of the Finger? I think you can guess who that's for. And truthiness? It's just that feeling in your gut to know what's right and what's wrong. Apparently truthiness is absent in some.

Labels: freedom of speech, Kathy Sierra, truthiness

As Jim Hedger and I discussed on our weekly radio show on Webmaster Radio today, Abdel Kareem Nabil has just been sentenced to 4 year in prison, 3 of these years are for insulting Islam and inciting sectarian strife and one year for insulting President Mubarak.

As Jim mentioned on the SiteProNews blog, here is what he was charged for:

Nabil wrote about riots in which a Coptic Christian church was attacked by Muslim worshipers over a play deemed offensive to Islam. "Muslims revealed their true ugly face and appeared to all the world that they are full of brutality, barbarism and inhumanity," he wrote, calling Muhammad and his early followers, “spillers of blood” for their teachings on the use of violence.

Now, I'm definitely not going to step in and make this any sort of religious post, we've all been less than perfect at one time or another and there are enough "spillers of blood" to go around BUT what's a key issue here is the man's right to be heard (or read as the case may be).

As we noted on the show, I would call on any and all bloggers to bring this point up and, as Jim asked, to avoid vacations to Egypt until such time as these sorts of things don't occur and there is freedom of speech applied to those who may disagree with the status-quo. Right or wrong, every voice deserves the right to be heard.

Labels: abdel kareem nabil, freedom of speech, jim hedger, sitepronews, webmaster radio