May 20, 2009 archive

(Crossposted from The Free Speech Zone)

The statement drew wide notice. The Bush administration’s military commission system was often criticized because detainees were required to be represented by military defense lawyers appointed by the Pentagon and assigned to a special office of military defense lawyers for Guantánamo. Some detainees have refused to work with the lawyers, saying they are uniformed representatives of their enemies.

The filing showed that the Obama administration had not made a substantial change in the restriction.

It said that a detainee would be permitted a lawyer “of the accused’s own choosing.” But it added that the requested lawyer must be assigned to the Pentagon’s office of military defense lawyers for Guantánamo.

Maj. David J. R. Frakt of the Air Force, another defense lawyer for a Guantánamo detainee who is facing charges, said that change indicated that several of the Obama administration’s alterations to the Bush administration’s system were what he called “minor cosmetic changes.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05…

Get your hip waders on, I wanna open the shit valves….

Before I and my pardners here started Docudharma, I spent months with a group of blogging luminaries trying to start a truly community owned blog. We ran into many obstacles, from tech issues, since Soapblox was at that time a truly inferior platform, (which still has issues) to the inability endemic to the Left, lol, of actually agreeing on anything.

But it was a noble effort and it is time to consider it again.

I certainly don’t need to tell the Refugees why we need a truly communally owned blog, lol. But above avoiding the intellectual repression inherent in the occasional purge…there are other advantages to a community owned blog as well.

We need a true Town Square. We need a Commons. We need a true democracy where every one has an equal voice.

The internet is the most powerful tool we have to achieve true equality and freedom. For the first time in human history, regular people from all around the globe can connect without the filter of a medium owned by the Ruling Class. For the first time, ordinary people have a theoretically unfiltered way to make themselves heard and to join together in solidarity, or at least flame wars. For the first time, the citizens of the world can join together to, if they so wish, oppose the Ruling Class.

They have the guns, but we have the numbers, as Morrison sang. For the first time, we have a way to truly USE those numbers…..other than armed revolt, lol. Which rarely turns out well for us.

For the first time, we CAN truly be heard, can truly have a voice, and can use that voice to yell louder for real change.

But that can’t happen as long as someone OWNS it. As long as one person has the power to control the conversation, it is not a REAL Conversation.