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Fr Jun 16 -

BLOGGING WAR: And
Street Corner Thuggery -

If someone dropped you off in front of my current homebase, you'd see a fairly quiet neighborhood, somewhat seedy, but still pleasant. To the casual observer, everything looks normal on the surface. Ah, but it isn't...

In fact, there is a very nasty low-intensity guerilla newspaper war being prosecuted on my street corner.

I currently live a short distance away from a rather busy, 24-hour street corner in Broward County, South Florida, where there is a pharmacy, gas station and convenience store, all open around the clock. On the North East corner, there are usually two newspaper boxes. They each are supposed to contain print editions of a somewhat local, free, "alternative" weekly newspaper. Both of these publications are products of multi-million dollar corporations or subsidiaries thereof. Over the past month or so, the box for the CL-FL weekly has been repeatedly overturned so that its contents are inaccessible or smashed or purloined altogether. This week there is only one box left standing there on the corner: the box for the NT-BPB.

Although no hard chain of evidence has been established, I infer that NT or its proxies are behind the elimination of their competition on my corner-- of course, at this point in time, this is only conjecture on my part.

Surprisingly, this street corner war now seems to extend into the Internet. The Blogger who is actually a writer for the NT publication has allied himself with a Blogger from nearby Pembroke Pines. They have become The 2 Hard Guys Alliance: they do not recognize or link to the rest of us Bloggers in the neighborhood. The 2 Hard Guys comment on each other's Blogs and groom each other like chimpanzees. Two weeks ago,the newspaper's Blogger conjured up a prize which he awarded to the other Hard Guy Blogger. I suppose, anyone with skills in Photoshop could cook up something similar.

Thus, it appears that the NT publication or its multi-million-dollar corporate backers or their proxies are trying to repeat on the Internet what they've been doing on my street corner. They're trying to divide people up and eliminate anyone who dares to compete with them.

Will update as events warrant.
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