By mike flugennockWednesday - January 12th, 2011Categories: liberty, media
Don’t retreat — retweet! Just to refresh your memories — those of you who’ve been totally sucked into the Gabrielle Giffords media circus — last Friday, the US Department of “Justice” served subpoenas on Twitter seeking information on the accounts of activists connected to or in solidarity with Wikileaks. The attorney representing Wikileaks has — and rightly so — termed this action “harassment”, and an Icelandic MP and former anarchist sounded the alarm in a series of outraged tweets, commenting “USA government wants to know about all my tweets and more since november 1st 2009. Do they realize i am a member of parliament in iceland?”
I’d like to encouarge everyone reading this to “follow” Wikileaks on Twitter — or get an account, if you don’t have one, and “follow” Wikileaks — and tweet the message “I Am Spartacus” to Wikileaks and any other followers you have, and point to this open letter to the “Justice” Department from Anonops, as well as retweeting any important news from Wikileaks.
The problem is — at least, if you’re the US State, it’s a problem — Wikileaks can still be reached on the Web via any number of alternate links, such as through its numeric “dotted quad” IP addresses here and here. It can also be reached through its alternate domains in Switzerland and the Netherlands.
I’d like to encourage everyone reading this to follow that grand old Web censorship-defeating tradition of “mirroring” and passing alternate links around, and post these links to your blog or Web site:
Among my wife’s and my best friends are a gay couple who live near us in our neighborhood. One of the guys was a colleague of my wife’s for several years; before moving here, he was the first openly gay mayor of a town in Iowa. He also recently served as one of the ANC (Advisory Neighborhood Commission) representatives for our ward, and currently holds a management job for the city government. He and his partner have been in a serious, loving, committed relationship as far back as I can remember. They’ve bought a house and renovated it together and have been active contributors to the community. Every year they celebrate the anniversary of the US Constitution by having a really awesome party. Basically, we’re talking about a couple of really cool, hard-working, stand-up guys.
It always bothered me, though, that whenever I’ve been at their annual Constitution Day party for the past few years, their basement has been decorated with some Obama ’08 lawn signs and other campaign schwag — and I could never figure out why, given that Obama pretty much came right out during the ’08 campaign and stated his intention to do absolutely nothing to make our friends’ lives any less of a pain in the ass than they already are (and, in fact, he’s been working to make it even more of a pain in the ass). I’ve always been tempted to ask them why they supported Obama given his opposition to same-sex marriage, but as these guys have been good friends of my wife and I for many years, I’ve decided not to cause a big stink, and let it slide. Still, it really burned my toast to think that Barack Obama allowed himself to be portrayed as some big-time progressive, but didn’t want these guys to enjoy the same rights as my wife and I.
So, you can imagine just how steamed I got when I saw Obama contributing a video to the “It Gets Better” series. Hearing him delivering empty platitudes on tolerance and bullying really made me gag as I thought of his opposition to gay marriage — he supports the lame half-measure of “civil unions” — as well as his inviting Rick Warren, the infamous gay-bashing megachurch preacher, to speak at his Inauguration, and his Administration’s lawyers arguing before the Supreme Court in favor of retaining the insulting “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy on gays in the military. Mind you, I think the real problem is dead soldiers, not gay soldiers, but, still, the policy sucks on general principle. In the meantime, President Precious is giving us lame lip service on the bullying of gay, lesbian, bi and transgendered people, while he and his regime engage in bullying of a kind even worse than the physical kind — bullying by the State, in the form of repressive and discriminatory official policies.
Just when you think Obama’s smarmy, empty sentiments can’t be any more infuriating — it gets worse.
Just to refresh your memories — those of you who’ve been totally sucked into the Gabrielle Giffords media circus — last Friday, the US Department of “Justice” served subpoenas on Twitter seeking information on the accounts of activists connected to or in solidarity with Wikileaks. The attorney representing Wikileaks has — and rightly so — termed this action “harassment”, and an Icelandic MP and former anarchist sounded the alarm in a series of outraged tweets, commenting “USA government wants to know about all my tweets and more since november 1st 2009. Do they realize i am a member of parliament in iceland?”
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