The D.C. government has sent the ANSWER Coalition notification of $10,000 in fines for putting up posters in D.C. for the upcoming Sept. 15 antiwar demonstration. Further fines are expected if the posters are not taken down within 72 hours, and could total tens of thousands.

Yet politicians put up posters all the time in D.C., and no one complains.  This is clearly is selective prosecution with the aim of stifling dissent.

Bush’s Interior Department is threatening similar actions against ANSWER. The September 15 posters are legal and conform to city regulations. We will not allow the government’s intimidation tactics to slow our outreach or silence the antiwar movement.

We can stop this effort to repress the antiwar movement with your help.

This is part of a systematic effort to disrupt the organizing for the September 15 Mass March that is timed to coincide with the report of General Petraeus and the debate in Congress on the Iraq war.

Send a letter to the D.C. Mayor and the Director of Public Works protesting this outrageous selective prosecution.

7 Comments »

Using drugs to destroy the psyche of a dissident, as well as torture, is being practiced in Russia (again.) Many fear the Kremlin is just warming up too.

1 Comment »

Ethan Kaplan, Head of Technology at Warner Bros. Records, blogged about being at Gnomedex last week, saying that geek-fest was fun, but he found the self-important blowhards tiring, and shouldn’t we be thinking about how to use all this cool technology to help “the United States of America’s own third-world.”

For this he got slimed by Scoble, a major and usually sensible tech and video blogger. I’m not even sure what Scoble’s point was except that he appeared enraged that Kaplan said techies too often live in a self-referential bubble and never venture outside it.

The self-important blowhards were one reason I didn’t return to Gnomedex this year. Middle-aged men banging their rattles on the high chair, heckling speakers, does not make for a good conference. Can you imagine that being allowed at a political conference or serious business convention? Not a chance, they’d be thrown out. Yet it happened again this year at Gnomedex.

Kaplan says

What was supposed to, and what I think NEARLY came out of Gnomedex is that beyond the hall of mirrors and navel gazing that is the tech sphere, there is a larger world out there that NEEDS help desperately to get it out of the situation it is in. All the Web 2.0 shit, RSS tagging folksonomy crowd-source bullshit is not going to help situations in developing countries, namely the United States of America’s own third-world.

You want a good task for Gnomedex 08 Chris? Make part of it on the streets of Seattle, coming up with technological solutions to the povery, drugs and lack of health-care that exists on the very streets outside the conference hall. We pay attention to some stupid fight between overweight white guys inside a conference hall, where outside there are significant problems that we ignore for the sake of our own false prophet building.

So, how do we use technology to help others rather than just be entranced by the next shiny widget? We need to pump up the volume on this. With some thought, we can use this technology to genuinely help lots of people.

2 Comments »

British scientists predict a leveling off of high temperatures for the next two years, then a sharp rise and continuing probability of extreme heat worldwide.

No Comments »