I knew it was coming. Bruce Bateman struck back at Dengre in his Saipan Tribune column today. Bruce writes:
As for #2, what I'm looking to build in the CNMI isn't necessarily a propaganda machine meant to help MVA attract tourists or the CNMI Jedi party elect candidates. I'm building a netroots community where ideas and knowledge are exchanged and where the power to determine what is news is taken away from Mr. Younis, Mr. Tan, and Mr. Nelson. That includes websites that are critical of the CNMI as well as websites that showcase the CNMI.
In creating our own Internet image and pumping up the amount of information out there about life in Saipan, those websites that, well, suck will fall to the wayside. Those that are good will rise to the top to take their place.
...and I'm elated and annoyed that We Love Saipan has bumped me in google search results. Damn you, Walt, for being a success!
It seems there is a new Internet site that competes with “Saipan Sucks” for the title of most denigrating, most insulting, most negative trash talk about the CNMI. This one is a blog instead of a web site so allows for interactivity, which we might make use of by going onto the site and giving positive counter commentary to the abjectly negative content being put up there. On the other hand, that only eggs them on and increases readership to the offensive blogger who hides behind the dengre (or DUNGre as I prefer) nom de plume. He won't admit who he is or why he has such a negative impression of the CNMI or why he even cares what happens here. I'm betting he is in the pay of the Pelosi/Miller crowd that wanted an end to the garment factories here in the CNMI that competed with factories owned by their buddies and political cronies. They won but aren't satisfied. Now they're out for revenge.Hiding? I'm not so sure about that one. It is not too difficult to figure out Dengre's secret identity. Read his blog and then do a couple of google searches. He has also met with David Cohen to discuss issues on Saipan. He's not that anonymous. He just uses a moniker. Most online people do. I'm The Saipan Blogger. Keanu Reeves is Neo. Bruce continues:
This site is similar to the “white power” skinhead sites in that it promulgates the concept that the white supremacists in wash DC are the only ones capable of guiding the “poor, uneducated heathen locals” out here in the Pacific. Their brand of racism is particularly abhorrent considering their claim to moral as well as intellectual superiority. They rant on and on about what a terrible place Saipan is and how much better off we will be once under their boot.Alright, no comment on that one. Bruce continues:
Angelo V pioneered the approach of 1. Not mentioning the offending site by name, and 2. Devising a counter site or better yet a group of counter sites that drive the offender under the google/yahoo/anysearchengine radar. Good strategy, so I won't give the site name. Oddly enough, some of the pro-Saipan bloggers here actually link to this guy's hate-filled anti-Saipan site. Seems a strange contradiction to me but hey, freedom of speech and expression means “different strokes for different folks”. Too bad that philosophy is not understood by the bad-mouthing, exaggeration-prone bloggers on the site in question.#1 wasn't my idea. That was Walt. I have no problem saying the words Saipan Sucks. I'm also not afraid to say Voldemort.
As for #2, what I'm looking to build in the CNMI isn't necessarily a propaganda machine meant to help MVA attract tourists or the CNMI Jedi party elect candidates. I'm building a netroots community where ideas and knowledge are exchanged and where the power to determine what is news is taken away from Mr. Younis, Mr. Tan, and Mr. Nelson. That includes websites that are critical of the CNMI as well as websites that showcase the CNMI.
In creating our own Internet image and pumping up the amount of information out there about life in Saipan, those websites that, well, suck will fall to the wayside. Those that are good will rise to the top to take their place.
...and I'm elated and annoyed that We Love Saipan has bumped me in google search results. Damn you, Walt, for being a success!