County school officials are backing a principal’s decision to bar a picture of a lesbian student dressed in a tuxedo from the high school yearbook.

Others applauded Ward’s decision, including Karen Gordon, who said, “When uniformity is compromised, then authority no longer holds.”

What bizarre Big Brother-ish authoritarian doublespeak. Do not question. Do not deviate from Christian fundamentalist edicts (no matter how bigoted and contrary to the actual teachings of Christ they may be.) It should come as no surprise that this particular school is in Florida, that land of extremist Christianity and stolen elections.

The student editor of the yearbook, Keri Sewell, was fired after refusing her adviser’s order to take the picture out.

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Los Angeles premiere of the new documentary film, Mission Against Terror, on the Cuban Five, Feb 26, 2005.
Speakers:

Ian Thompson - Committee to Free the Five.
Father Geoff Bottoms: Awarded Cuban Friendship Medal, Cuba solidarity organizer in England
Bernie Dwyer: Co-director of film, Reporter with Radio Havana

The film features interviews with former CIA agent Phillip Agee, Cuban Five attorney Leonard Weinglass, Cuban National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon, family members of the Cuban Five, Miami Cuban progressive activist Andres Gomez and others.

MP3 (9.5 MB, 27:09 min.)

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Father Geoff Bottoms, Cuba solidarity organizer in England, and filmmaker Bernie Dwyer, who co-directed Mission Against Terror, a documentary about the Cuban Five, answer questions from the audience after the Los Angeles premiere of the film on Feb. 26, 2005.
MP3 (12.45 MB, 35:25 min.)

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From Boing Boing

Why John Gilmore won’t show his ID at airports. Pittsburgh’s Post-Gazette has an amazing, balanced, in-depth profile on John Gilmore, the guy who Sun hired to write their first code, the guy who co-founded EFF, the guy who won’t show ID to get on an airplane:

In post 9/11 America, asking “Why?” when someone from an airline asks for identification can start some interesting arguments. Gilmore, who learned to argue on the debate team in his hometown of Bradford, McKean County, has started an argument that, should it reach its intended target, the U.S. Supreme Court, would turn the rules of national security on end, reach deep into the tug-of-war between private rights and public safety, and play havoc with the Department of Homeland Security.

At the heart of Gilmore’s stubbornness is the worry about the thin line between safety and tyranny.

“Are they just basically saying we just can’t travel without identity papers? If that’s true, then I’d rather see us go through a real debate that says we want to introduce required identity papers in our society rather than trying to legislate it through the back door through regulations that say there’s not any other way to get around,” Gilmore said. “Basically what they want is a show of obedience.”

On a recent podcast, Adam Curry, who lives in England and who was in San Francisco at the time, said the security procedures at US airports were absurd, humiliating, and that, as a long-time pilot, he said there were so many ways to get on a tarmac that these ludicrous security checks do nothing to make people safer and seem designed to instill fear instead. And he’s not a flaming liberal, either.

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From Dave Winer, who played a major role in the invention of blogs, rss feeds, and now, podcasting.

Thanks to Halley for the kind words about my contribution to podcasting, as well as Adam’s. This gives me a chance to say that I’ve not tried to write Adam out of the story. Quite the opposite, I think his contribution was essential, and not just in the last half-year. Podcasting appears to everyone but a small number of people, to be an instant wonder. But the trail goes back a long way. It took a lot of iteration and patience to make it happen. As I write this a bunch of other future “instant wonders” are in gestation.

There will be a time when they will move to the top of the stack and be the engines of growth for the tech industry. Markoff will write stories about them too, explaining how his friends have finally figured out how to make money from them as if it was the responsibility of every technology to make John Doerr even richer. I’d like people to be more open-minded about these ideas, while they need help to get started. In hindsight, podcasting could have happened much sooner if people just would have listened.

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