This post is inspired by Tweek’s group - Lets Write a damn Book!

It has been suggested by Krypke that a chapter be included on the “Chronicles of Infowarriors” – the pathway traveled that led us to be where we are at. Krypke writes “Everyone was somewhere else, doing something else. We all found our way here differently. Though we have consensus on many topics, we all have particular crimes close to each ones heart.”

So here is my pathway. Warning, proceed at the risk of finding this irrelevant to anything you ever wanted to know, it’s just personal reflections.

My journey initially began simply from becoming sick and tired of corporations and organizations screwing me. I noted that most of them aimed to take advantage of people where ever possible, as a matter of policy, and for no reason it seemed to me, other than they believed they could, and they would not be challenged. I began fighting back.

“Better to die on your feet than to live on your knees” Emiliano Zapata

I started my first blog to out an organization that was my employer at the time. After my exposé, this organization went to absurd lengths to cover its impropriety, to the point of installing an administrator who crafted an entire new management structure. The funding bodies of the group (government and charity organizations), were not willing to be embarrassed by revelations that their support had been often misappropriated and they therefore threw even more money at the group concerned to wash it clean.

The manger of said group, almost entirely responsible for all the prior misconduct, was naturally retained and bestowed with even more authority under the reorganization. At the same time, everyone who cared about their work and had thus supported the whistle blowing was purged from the organization.

I stepped up my campaign to include not only my new blog, but a letter box drop of hundreds of fliers in the area of the client base and pasted posters all over the place in public. I was threatened with legal action by one of the administrators if I didn’t retract what I had dispersed. I called his bluff telling him that I would enjoy the opportunity to disclose my knowledge in court; I never did receive any further correspondence, legal or otherwise.

Thus the activist within was born. My next standing was shortly after against an ethically challenged landlord. I discovered after setting up home in his property that things were not what they seemed at first glance. For example, the first time it rained it became apparent sections of the roof offered no barrier to this element of nature.

Further more in one of the first such instances of rain (admittedly heavy), the entire carport/garage roof caved in and collapsed. My landlord told me that he could not be held responsible.

The basement started filling with water as well, giving the house a lovely scent of mouldy air. I discovered a hole in the basement wall, on closer inspection I found a large circumference pipe behind the hole. It was buried through the ground to catch flooding water in the garden and deliver it to the basement. I asked the landlord if he knew of it and he said oh yeah, the previous tenant engineered that to irrigate his marijuana crop in the basement, but it has nothing to do with me, you rented the property like that.

As I began blogging this ordeal, other people started leaving comments detailing horrific accounts at the hands of this landlord. I discovered he owned over 100 properties after submitting complaints to various government departments. I put it to my landlord that he was nothing more than a thief, preying on vulnerable people for huge profit. He said that may be so but that makes me smart, unlike you, you have nothing.

I took this fine fellow to a residential tribunal court four times over the duration of my lease, the last of which I claimed and was awarded $2,300.00 worth of rental credits. He appealed the decision but was over ruled. After that he became all upset for some reason and I was visited at 3am by a gang of six with baseball bats breaking into my home. My partner phoned for police while I and my friend Tommy Hawk entertained these guests, note – axe beats baseball bat. With the clock ticking, they decided it was in their best interests to abort their mission.

Because my landlord had been so nice, as my lease was nearing completion, I filed enough complaint details for three different government authorities to take action against him. One declared the house unfit for habitation and he had to subsequently rebuild most of it. Another fined him tens of thousands for hazardous unlicensed electrical fittings.

I guess you could say I got the blogging bug from here on. I purchased my first domain in 2006, several months later a friend at the time, in the USA offered to share his server from a hosting company. I launched my site in Feb 2007 and soon discovered first hand just how low my Government was willing to stoop.

As I had lived under one of the most oppressive Governments in Australian history for the previous 10 years, naturally my first article was all about this very subject, republished here Dec 2007.

My brand new site suddenly disappeared one morning. Upon checking with my contact, I was informed that the hosting company was under duress to pull the plug. The host had said they were approached by legal reps from the Australian Embassy, acting on behalf of the Australian Government, who offered to pay the host client US $5000.00 for deleting my website.

The offer was politely declined but a couple of weeks later, the site disappeared once more after an attack. Info relayed reported that the server had received 10,000 hits for my site, from one IP address in very quick succession. This got the poor server lethally confused. The offending IP was identified as Australian in location. The host became some what reluctant to continue the arrangement after that incident and it was several months more before I found an affordable alternative arrangement.

Due to my blogging, I began to take note of many activist links. I didn’t consider myself to be an activist and still don’t. I’m just someone who will defend my rights stubbornly to all ends, and after much experience, I’m glad to stand in support of anyone else who feels the same way.