Hard to explain. One of the top bloggers in the world is Beppe Grillo, an Italian comedian turned political activist who held a day last year called Vaffanculo Day (or F--- Off Day). I'm still trying to get my head around what exactly the day is about, but I think it's partly (or a lot) about Freedom of Information. Grillo, understandably, is a bit concerned about the Italian media, which is controled by a few companies (run by, gee, the guy who is against Prime Minister). You think the US is getting bad? Italy is our future. Anyway, Grillo has been using the Net to raise hell on this issue, and it's been quite interesting. Again, I'm only beginning to understand what this is all about, and hope that next time I get to Italy I can meet the man. You can read more about Grillo and V2-Day here.
Pathetic. This is really supposed to be news...for the better? If you listened to Republicans talk you would think they actually liked the free market but if you believed them, you would be sadly mistaken.
Qwest Communications International Inc. on Thursday introduced DSL plans with faster download speeds, including one that is the fastest DSL service from a major U.S. phone company.
Qwest is charging $104.99 per month for a download speed of 20 megabits per second. For 12 mbps, it is charging $51.99 per month. The prices are $5 lower when combined with local phone service.
Compare this "great" offer to what I just signed in France, which we all know hates choice and hates the free market, according to the GOP. For €53 per month I receive a 100 mbps internet connection plus phone calls throughout Europe and North America plus TV channels. In local terms for local buyers one euro is one dollar but even with the terrible exchange rate this is a steal compared to the business friendly market in the US. The Republicans only care about giving business everything they want, always at the expense of consumers. It's hard to believe the GOP could do so much damage to the previously competitive US market.
They actually care about the rule of law, oddly enough. And when I say "old fashioned" I of course mean, pre-Bush.
Internet service providers must not release personal information about users in New Jersey without a valid subpoena, even to police, the state's highest court ruled Monday.
New Jersey's Supreme Court found that the state's constitution gives greater protection against unreasonable searches and seizures than the U.S. Constitution.
The court ruled that Internet providers should not disclose private information to anyone without a subpoena.
I was searching around YouTube and came across this interview I did with an Italian journalist in Rome a few weeks ago. The interview is about the role of the blogs and the Internet in the US elections. It should give you a flavor for the kind of things Europeans are interested in regarding our use of the Net, but also the key points I raise when I travel and do these talks.
Oh, and I found a talk I did, also in Rome, for college students in Sardinia and Sicily (we did it via Web video from Rome). Same topic, how the US is using the Internet for the elections, but this talk went for a good hour-plus, in Italian, with Q&A (kids in some of the more out of the way places in Italy not only don't speak English well, but they don't get American speakers because visiting Americans generally don't speak Italian - so it was kind of neat being able to do talks and Q&As for younger people). Just to give you the flavor, here is a short part where I explain what ActBlue, the Democratic fundraising site, is (again, in Italian).
NBC's Chuck Todd is one of the more astute political observers out there (we thought this before he penned this morning's post, below).
Curious of what the bitterness and anger could look like if Obama is somehow denied the Democratic nomination? Check out the reaction from the ObamaNation over Wednesday’s debate. To put it simply, ABC was under siege yesterday. This may only be a taste of how the ObamaNation would react to a Clinton nomination. If MoveOn is motivated to do a petition campaign against the media over a debate, imagine what Clinton delegates and undecided superdelegates would face this summer if there is doubt. And as the Politico’s Ben Smith pointed out yesterday, it’s also what the GOP would face in the general election, especially if Obama is nominee. The level of devotion among Obama's supporters rivals what Bush had with his flock in 2004. The left-wing blogosphere is MUCH more powerful than what you see on the right this cycle and it reminds us of the advantage Bush had in '04. While we all know about that so-called right-wing voice machine, don’t forget that there is now a left-wing noise machine (on the internet) as well. And it has found its voice.
The ABC debate, according to the network, got 10.7 million viewers.
It also triggered the most furious outrage I've seen from the huge, and growing, Obama activist base, which in this case merged with the liberal Netroots -- which aren't always on the same page -- to generate a volume of complaints about the first 45-minutes of questioning that are pretty impossible to miss.
It's just a small glimpse, I think, of the level of heat the media is going to take in the general election, and John McCain doesn't seem to have any equivalent.
Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves. The Republicans have an amazing ability to turn defeat into victory (and Democrats, the opposite), and they've been playing the media refs for going on 3 decades now. But I've been telling people for a while that the right-wing blogosphere is next to non-existent in power as compared to the left. In a future post, I'll try to analyze why this is. But for now, suffice it to say, there's a reason we bloggers do what we do. You, and we, together make up a rather relevant and powerful force in Democratic, and overall US, politics. Be proud. Be vigilant. And be active. It matters.
Earlier this year, arm chair terrorism fighter Bill O'Reilly blasted the chair of General Electric for doing business with terrorist countries like Iran. Bill was in rare form when he took on this issue. But, Bill needs to have on another guest and blast him for cavorting with Iranians and Syrians, possibly even aiding in the recruitment of terrorists and certainly facilitating the spewing of hatred against Israel.
That guest would be Rupert Murdoch, the head of FOX News.
Murdoch owns FOX, for whom O'Reilly works. Murdoch also owns MySpace.com. Therein lies the problem. An astute observer pointed us to some of the users of Mr. Murdoch's site. There are numerous users of MySpace.com in states that sponsor terrorism, like Iran, Syria and Sudan. That alone should warrant intervention from O'Reilly using his own standards for doing business with terrorist nations. But, that's not the biggest problem. It's the Web sites honoring terrorist organizations that give us pause:
There are many other similar sites on MySpace, like this one that honors Ayatollah Khomeini and contains a number of other troubling-looking videos. Granted, there is no way for me to verify whether that site above is the official Hezbollah site on MySpace. But, given the grave nature of the threat, figuring that out seems like a perfect task for Bill O'Reilly and his crack team of terror fighters over at Fox News.
Also, don't forget, O'Reilly spent a lot of time attacking DailyKos and other blogs for content that he viewed as objectionable, even though it was written by kooky anonymous visitors to our sites (and even though O'Reilly's own kooky commenters made some rather troubling threats about Hillary). O'Reilly has a very strict standard for accountability from others, even when they're not really responsible for the hate that may appear on their Web sites. Let's see if Bill O'Reilly and FOX News hold Murdoch's MySpace to that same standard of accountability.
When Republicans talk about "free market" they hope that those listening believe in the Easter Bunny, because it's completely false. What they really mean is a jury-rigged system where their friends get to avoid competition but in public, they talk about competition and the benefits of competition. (Think ATT and it's re-consolidation in recent years.) More proof that Republicans have trashed our system, driving up costs compared to increased competition in Europe, where costs have gone down. Broadband internet has taken off across Europe, leaving the US in its wake. All the Republicans can offer is snide remarks about "Old Europe" but it's their own policies that are old and stuffy.
“We have four countries that are world leaders — Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and Finland,” said Viviane Reding, the European telecommunications commissioner. “We have eight countries which have higher penetration rates than the U.S. and Japan. We are not doing badly at all.”
In addition to the three Nordic countries and the Netherlands, four others — Britain, Belgium, Luxembourg and France — had surpassed the United States by July 2007. By January 2008, Germany had also done so.
I love the idea behind this article. I had some of the extended Greek relatives find me on Facebook recently. Guess they know I'm gay now! It can be odd having family intrude on your public life that isn't so much private as it is not-family. Kind of like when my mom occasionally brings up something I've written on the blog and suddenly I'm hoping I didn't swear in that post. From the Washington Post:
When Matt Florian signed onto his Facebook account recently to check the status of his 400-plus friends, he had a friend request.
It was from his dad.
The junior at Sherwood High School in Montgomery County didn't panic. No. He simply took a deep breath and pondered his options.
He could accept it. He could ignore it. He could accept it, but limit the parts of his Facebook profile his dad could see. He pondered more. What were the social implications of "friending" your folks?
Who is the hypocrite now? Heaven knows we would never want to allow whistleblowers to expose corruption. It's simply not done in proper circles.
An international website that claims to blow the whistle on corporate and governmental fraud vowed yesterday to defy attempts by a US court to close it down. Wikileaks allows whistleblowers to anonymously post documents in an attempt to expose corruption and wrongdoing. Its owners said yesterday that a Californian judge had ordered that the site be taken offline last week, after an injunction from a Swiss bank.
I wrote about this yesterday. Here are a few of the banned "obscene" photos that Facebook took down. Note, as mentioned before, that Facebook has no problem hosting 250 pro-Anorexia groups that give young girls instructions on how to starve themselves to death.
(Greek liberal political blogger, Panayotis Vryonis, runs Vrypan.net. Like most foreigners, Panayoti has an incredibly cool, advanced camera/phone/GPS/video/voice recorder that is lighter than a feather and fits in your pocket. The camera is 5 megapixels. The GPS is free. I am so sick of going abroad and seeing phones that are generations beyond anything we have here. I'm suspecting that our wonderful domestic-spying friends at the American phone companies are restraining trade in some way. It's really pathetic how backwards we are in some things.)
When I was in Greece two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to meet with the chief of staff to Greek opposition leader George Papandreou. They were preparing for national elections held this past Sunday (the left lost). I got to meet with a number of senior media staffers, including their blogger, and it was surprising to what degree the Greek blogosphere reflects our own. Certainly, the US blogosphere, and especially political blogosphere, beats out most (if not all) countries in the world in terms of its size and import in national (and local) politics. But what I found funny, and interesting, were a few key points.
1. The liberal political blogosphere in Greece is more powerful than the conservative blogosphere.
2. Liberal blogs, while anti-conservative, don't necessarily identify with a particular party, or at least with the lead liberal party, PASOK. In other words, the liberal bloggers can be a bit bitchy with their own party (those are my words).
The funny thing is how closely this mirrors the US. The liberal American political blogosphere is more powerful than the conservative. When the media and politicians talk about "the blogs" they're using talking about us - about Markos, about Atrios, about Arianna. They're not talking about Michelle, Hugh and John. Whether this is because conservatives prefer talk radio as their unifying outlet, or the fact that liberals are more independent-spirited, something that lends itself to the Internet and political innovation, who knows.
The second, and even funnier thing, in my view, is that the left is often a bit critical of its own lead party. Sound familiar?
Greece only has 25% of its citizens online, or so I was told. While in the US, over half the population has broadband Internet access (e.g., cable or DSL). But there's still a lot you can do by organizing a key cabal of supporters, who then disseminate your message to the offline community. It's what many of us had to do in the late 90s in the US. With email lists of only a few thousand people, and Web sites that only got a few thousands visitors a day, we still wreaked havoc. And France was way behind in terms of blogs, and even its online presence wasn't quite up to the European par years ago. France now leads Europe in its blog presence.
I'm told we're also blocked at O'Hare. It's not a good thing that sites have no way of knowing whether they're even blocked in various filtering software. Obviously there's going to be an error rate with everything, but still, I find it troubling that someone company is errantly censoring political content. I've requested an "unblock" via their Web site. I'll report back if and when I hear from them. And if you're in other airports around the world, try to access our blog and other top blogs, from the left and right, and see if we're blocked - and if so, take a picture of the message like my friend Jason did above (just us your cell phone cam or you're real camera and point it at the screen and click), and send it to me. Thanks,
