The debate last night was an interesting contrast of style and substance. Kerry was on message, and hammered home point after well argued poing. President Bush was trying very hard to be humorous (it came off as rather forced, in my opinion), and was absolutely demolished on Social Security, Jobs and Healthcare - and didn't do too well on Education. Early snap polls agree with me: Bush had his strongest debate showing yet, but polls all show either Kerry winning by a large margin, or a tie (depending upon the bias of the news organization! ABC News and Fox News favouring Bush should be no surprise, and even they called it a draw). Of course, snap polls are not to be relied upon; snap polls showed Gore and Walter Mondale winning debates that were later judged a loss. There is one troubling sign from this debate: Kerry referenced Cheney's daughter in a question on Gay Marriage (I thought he did so very tactfully), and Lynn Cheney is in full-on "angry mom" mode. I've seen a couple of journalists echo her criticism of Kerry - this one needs to be spun carefully, or the mud will stick. After three excellent debate performances, it would be a shame to go down because of an angry mom who can't accept that her daughter doesn't choose to be gay.
IndyMedia.org
IndyMedia.org are an umbrella for the publishing of independent media stories from around the world. They don't currently have a Missouri section (anyone who wants to start one would have my technical support and any financial backing I can muster, by the way). A few days ago, they were contacted by Italian and Swiss media outlets and forced to redact a photograph showing local police carefully photographing faces of demonstrators in a WTO demonstration. (Intimidation tactics such as this are increasingly common from authorities in Western democracies, unfortunately) The Italian government then publically branded IndyMedia "supporters of terrorists", and used an international treaty to request the seizure of their servers. FBI agents then contacted IndyMedia's host, Rackspace, in the USA. Rackspace pointed out that Indy's servers were in the UK - so the FBI showed up at their London hosting facility (accompanied by UK agents), and confiscated several IndyMedia servers. IndyMedia were not notified, and Rackspace was placed under a gagging order preventing them from telling IndyMedia what was going on. Today, IndyMedia finally got their drives back - and are still unaware of any pending investigation/prosecution against them.
In fairness to the FBI and UK authorities, they probably had to comply with the Italian/Swiss request. Treaties are pretty clear on required cooperation with signatory countries. What is not acceptable in this case is the Italian violation of European Convention on Human Rights on a number of counts: Freedom to demonstrate (free of legal encumberance), freedom of the press, and freedom of speech. Privacy rights do not apply to the officers taking photographs: they were doing so in public, and thus cannot reasonably expect anonymity/invisibility.
A more important issue is at stake, though, and that is the freedom to report - whether from a biased or objective standpoint - what's going on in a Western democracy. There are already curbs being placed on this; limited media access to campaign events (and restricted coverage of "first ammendment zones", the only spaces in which protests are permitted at rallies for either political party), media abstention of negative coverage in Iraq, the complete lack of media coverage of police oppression of demonstrations, and so forth.
We need an independent media, and it's important that we protect IndyMedia as best we can. I'm open to suggestions, and would be willing to help setup mirrors and similar as needed.
Mood: accomplished
Music: My PC fan pretending to be an aeroplane
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