More bloggers than ever face arrest for exposing human rights abuses or criticizing governments, says a report.

Since 2003, 64 people have been arrested for publishing their views on a blog, says the University of Washington annual report. In 2007 three times as many people were arrested for blogging about political issues than in 2006, it revealed. More than half of all the arrests since 2003 have been made in China, Egypt and Iran, said the report.

Jail sentence

Citizens have faced arrest and jail for blogging about many different topics, said the World Information Access (WIA) report.

Arrested bloggers exposed corruption in government, abuse of human rights or suppression of protests. They criticized public policies and took political figures to task.

The report said the rising number of arrests was testament to the "growing" political importance of blogging. It noted that arrests tended to increase during times of "political uncertainty", such as around general elections or during large scale protests.

Jail time followed arrest for many bloggers, said the report, which found that the average prison sentence for blogging was 15 months. The longest sentence found by the WIA was eight years.

It acknowledged that the true number of bloggers arrested could be far higher than the total it found as, in some cases, it proved hard to verify if an arrest had taken place and on what grounds.

For instance, it said the Committee to Protect Bloggers has published information about 344 people arrested in Burma - many of whom are thought to be be bloggers - but the WIA could not verify all the reports.

It also noted that many nations, perhaps as many as 30, imposed technological restrictions on what people can do online. In nations such as China this made it difficult for people to use a blog as a means of protest.

The report pointed out that it is not just governments in the Middle East and East Asia that have taken steps against those publishing their opinions online. In the last four years, British, French, Canadian and American bloggers have also been arrested.

The report predicted that the number of blogger arrests in 2008 would exceed the 36 seen in 2007 thanks to greater popularity of blogging as a medium, greater enforcement of net restrictions, and elections in China, Pakistan, Iran and the US.

Read More here

On this and every Memorial day, I remember and miss one of the people who had a profound effect on my life - My Grandfather.

He returned to Eaton, Wisconsin to help run his mothers farm, in the 1920 U.S. census he is listed as the 26 year old head of household with an occupation of farmer.  Farming did not occupy all his attention though.  Nicholas met Mary Genevieve Nowicki the daughter of  Stanley and Elizabeth (Krupa) Nowicki also of the town of Eaton.  They were married on September 6, 1920 at SS Cyril and Methodius Church by Reverend Peter Kurzejka. His best man was his brother Michael and the maid of honor was her sister Rose Nowicki.  From that marriage came four children, one of which is my mother.

Had my Grandfather given up and died, I would not be here today. He taught me the importance of family and hard work. He was a respectful man and when I talked with him about politics and the presidency in my idealist youth, he would always say, "You may not like the man, but you must respect the office".

He may not be the last living vet of World War One but he will always be the man I remember on Memorial Day, each and every year.

                                             Nicholas Polasik 1893 - 1976

The great Aretha Franklin spells it out as she says: R-E-S-P-E-C-T find out what it means to me!

For the past couple of weeks, I quietly sat back and witnessed a great deal of Lack of Respect in the City of Franklin. This Lack of Respect has been on many levels.

• Lack of Respect for the citizens of the communities of Franklin and Oak Creek by the 27^th Street Steering Committee to dare to criticize the name of Boomgaard District and the costs involved in naming it.
• Lack of Respect for members of the 27^th Street Steering Committee who have spent much time working on the 27^th Street project. Yes they may be bull headed but have spent a lot of time and sweat on the project which they get paid nothing for.
• Lack of Respect from City officials (like Alderman Sohns) to bloggers (who are their constituents) and to the other vocal citizens of Franklin.
• Lack of Respect from the media as we become a laughing stock due to this Boomgaard fiasco (Sykes, Belling and Stingl)
• Lack of Respect from other communities as we weather the issues of mistrust of our community leaders and their leadership.
• Lack of Respect from the Zizzo group to the citizens of Franklin for not involving us in renaming a major part of our city.
• Lack of Respect to our city officials, who some say, do not deserve our respect on how they have handled this issue.
• Lack of Respect from a fellow FranklinNOW Blogger for other community bloggers that choose to blog about this Boomgaard fiasco.  Who asked in one of his blogs "How's that "New Day" working out for you guys?"  I guess not too well with all this Lack of Respect!

Most of the Franklin Bloggers and commentators just chided the Council on the funny name the Zizzo group came up for the district, while Greg felt he needed to take it to the extreme.

Talk about WAGGING THE DOG.

Updated 4/24/2008 - 10:46PM

Greg Responded with:

My apologies to Greg as his posting looked like he was taking up 2+ hours of the Mayors time to discuss the naming of the Boomgaard District. You may remember that Greg currently is Vice Chairman of the Environmental Commission and an employee of Alderman Kristen Wilhelms Conservancy organization Milwaukee Area Land Conservancy (MALC) .

A Tip of the hat to Franklin BULLSEYE blogger Fred Keller as he sums up so perfectly the latest news about New BerlinNOW bloger Linda Richter in his Saw You in the News posting.

It seems that her current legal woes are due to Linda 's involvement through her We Care New Berlin-PAC that allegedly lied three times in the groups sponsored campaign literature, about JJ Blonien. Blonien was the opposing aldermanic candidate for New Berlins 6th District while the group supported, Bill Moore, the incumbent.

It is good to see the bad karma return to this mean spirited Blog Roll friend of one of our own FranklinNOW bloggers. This FranklinNOW blogger encouraged us all  to read Linda's inflammatory, Anti-Kevin Fisher blog just a few months ago even though she herself was featured as a personal attack blogger in a March 2008 Milwaukee Magazine article.

The NewBerlinNOW.com site features a similar war pitting blogger and ex-school board member Linda Richter against blogger Matt Thomas, current vice president of the board and a leader of its conservative majority. Talk about getting personal: Richter publicized the bankruptcy records of Thomas on her blog to undermine his claim as a champion of fiscal sobriety.

Her now infamous blogs promoted us to be calling State Senator Mary Lazych to reprimand and gag, Kevin Fischer, for accusations of name calling of other bloggers and commenter's to his FranklinNOW blog. I certainly hope we can encourage our friends that are New Berlin residents to contact the Waukesha DA and encourage him to prosecute Linda along with her group to the fullest extent of the law if he finds the allegations to be true.

Yes it looks like Actions Do Have Consequences for EVERYBODY!

Other reading on the subject:

• Matt Thomas's The Right Side of New Berlin - Breaking News: Criminal Complaint Filed Against Linda Richter, Rush Wilkens & Ray McInerney
• The Daily Scoff - The Richter Scale of Injustice

FranklinNOW editor Mark Maley has come through as promised with the Honor Rolls for the City of Franklin. This feature should be updated on a regular basis according to Mark.  I am a firm believer that academic excellence should be featured in the community just as we praise our students for their athletic and extracurricular achievements. After all, isn't this the key reason we are willing to pay the taxes we do, for the kids.

Third - Congratulations to former FranklinNOW (now solo flying with BULLSEYE) blogger Fred Keller with his effort to get Franklin elected officials to sign a pledge to keep tax increases to under 3%. He has taken some criticism from other bloggers as to the impossibility of this pledge. Yet he is getting members of the Franklin Common Council to sit down and discuss how they might be able to back a tax cutting pledge.

Despite the half empty glass, views of some FranklinNOW bloggers, this positive action by Fred shows that there are Franklin Taxpayers who are willing to go one step further than just talking about how things should be.  As Steve Taylor - unconfirmed (but soon to be confirmed) 4th District aldermanic candidate said at the candidates forum "Almost all the people I talked with have said we need to lower property taxes".

Well Fred is trying to make sure everyone got the message.

In the past month while I have been on hiatus, I have watched 10 to 12  bloggers write multiple blog postings about him and his "Crazy Right Wing antics" all culminated by a Milwaukee Magazine article which bloggers are still posting about.

FranklinNOW blogger Greg Kowalski had no idea he was promoting Kevin Fischer when he wrote his now infamous post Actions have Consequences where he lists the following blogs that did stories on Fischer:  Musings of a Thoughtful Conservative ,  Folkbum's Rambles and Rants,  Wigderson Library & Pub, Real Debate Wisconsin, Pundit Nation, Inside New Berlin, Whallah! , Blue Racine,  Fairly Conservative,  Blogging Blue.

More recent exposure has been given to Fischer in a Milwaukee Magazine article which local blogger John Michlig's - Sprawled Out blog (which contains 3 recent postings about Fischer) and Greg Kowalski's "I'm in Milwaukee Magazine" have brought to the blogsphere chronicling the tenuous blog relationship that Greg and Kevin have going over a blog where Fischer called Kowalski "Cheesecake Breath". This was in reference to Greg's multiple blogs promoting the Cheesecake Factory coming to Franklin. 

WOW - If people did not know who Kevin Fischer was from his stints on WISN and Channel 10's  INTERchange they will now.  You can't buy this kind of exposure. Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh had his Oxycontin exposure and is still a major conservative mainstay while shock jock, Don Imus was dropped from his nationally CBS syndicate show due to his racial slur comments only to pick up a sweet multi year syndication contract with ABC late last year. 

The Milwaukee Magazine article states:

Mark Maley, the CNI executive who oversees the NOWWeb sites, doesn't see a serious problem. "Even with the skirmishes, nobody's been sued," he says. "It's basically been a handful of people tossing mud. There's been some online behavior that I'm not thrilled about, but the vast, vast majority is pretty positive stuff." Even some of the people involved in the verbal duels have also engaged in enterprising work, like airing details of community development projects or conducting open-records requests for officials' e-mails.

But bad journalism might be what the readers want. "I'm not crazy about it," Maley says. "But the FranklinNOW site has rapidly become our No. 2 Web site rather than 6 or 7."

That is because, thanks to all the FREE publicity, Kevin's blog is getting from other blogers, he is getting record hits on his "This Just In ... " NOW site and Mr. Maley is taking that to the bank.

Kevin has just announced that he will be filling in more on WISN radio and is in private negotiations for the expansion of his roll on WISN Radio 1130.  For those of you not familiar with this type of vague announcement, Mike Gousha spoke of expanded rolls on a local station too, during speaking engagements right before he was back on TV at WISN Channel 12.

Do you think that WISN Radio 1130, an extremely conservative station, would expand his role, if Kevin's opinions did not produce revenue for their station?

That he is/will be attracting the conservative listener just like Mark Belling, Vicki McKenna, Jay Webber and yes Rush Limbaugh is, while this "Get Kevin Mob" has attracted even more listeners.

Does this mean that Kevin will be departing from employment with Senator Lazych?  Not according to a comment he made on "Wigderson's Library & Pub" blog. 

As for comments that Kevin Fischer is "the devil on my shoulder", Kevin writes my blog, I am part of the evil "Team Fischer" and do his biding (yes master), Kevin hijacks my blog, I support Kevin unconditionally,and that I agree with everything Kevin says, are all untrue.

What is the truth is I am a personal friend of Kevin Fischer (personal friends sometimes disagree on issues) and he is laughing because the "Get Kevin Mob" has been .........

This is fresh start, on a new blog, with a new name, that WILL NOT contain the nastiness that has been seen on FranklinNOW in the past.

 I do want to start out with an apology to Greg Kowalski of FranklinNOW, as I know he feels I have offended him in the past with references to his family or person in my past blogs under a different blog name.

• This does not mean future blogs may not be critical of opinions stated in Greg Kowalski’s, Kevin Fischer's or any other blogs on the CommunityNOW. However  I do not intend on posting any hurtful nicknames to those with opposing views. 


• I have learned how to credit other writers when using their writings to stress a point that I wish to communicate to readers.  Some have called it plagiarism; I call it a beginner bloggers error. I will not make that mistake again.


• I still believe in and will blog about, the improvements the School Board needs to make to regain the trust of the Franklin Residents.  In what I write, I hope to encourage fiscally conservative individuals to run for School Board to replace the current members that do not fit these criteria.


• I still believe the current City Council is one of the best we have had in a long time. They are not perfect, but have done much more than past administrations  and the current School Board in trying to keep our taxes in line, despite the issues we face as a growing city.


• I still believe that Franklin has a chance to continue with its development without being dictated to by developers.  But given that developments are money making propositions, Franklin can not throw up too many roadblocks that will send the developers to other communities instead of ours.


• I still believe that what is now the so called Civic Center does not have to be our Civic Center just because we have our City Hall and Police Center in that location.  If we have gotten ourselves into a predicament that we can not legally get ourselves out of, a plan B location should be considered.  


• I still believe that Franklin is a basically good place to live in but has a long way to go.  That we can not waste our time with those who are trying to make us something we are not, “The North Shore” because we are better.


• I still believe there are those that do not live here in Franklin and wish to meddle in our city’s issues. We need to ignore them because they are insignificant and don’t belong here.  I will not tolerate their nasty comments. Hence a delay in posting your comments.

So I still believe there is room for my opinion on FranklinNOW.

Thanks

Bryan Maersch

Why does a dog wag its tail?

Because a dog is smarter than its tail.

If the tail was smarter, the tail would wag the dog.