Latino Blogger

What will it take for the Democrats in Congress to grow a spine?

Maybe watching this clip should be a mandatory exercise for all of them.

In a very troubling development for freedom of speech and the future of “net neutrality”, the New York Times is reporting that Verizon Wireless has rejected a request from Naral Pro-Choice America, the abortion rights group, to make Verizon’s mobile network available for a text-message program.

Verizon claims that they have the right to block “controversial or unsavory” text messages.

The messages in question are part of a program that allows people to sign up for text messages from Naral by sending a message to a five-digit number known as a short code. The program has been accepted by other carriers.

According to the NYT, Verizon told Naral that

it does not accept programs from any group ‘that seeks to promote an agenda or distribute content that, in its discretion, may be seen as controversial or unsavory to any of our users.”

However I think that this position is arbitrary and ludicrous.

I agree with Naral’s president Nancy Keenan who said that Verizon’s decision interfered with political speech and activism.

I also agree with Keenan when she says that

No company should be allowed to censor the message we want to send to people who have asked us to send it to them. Regardless of people’s political views, Verizon customers should decide what action to take on their phones. Why does Verizon get to make that choice for them?

Naral provided an example of a recent text message that it has sent to supporters: “End Bush’s global gag rule against birth control for world’s poorest women! Call Congress. (202) 224-3121. Thnx! Naral Text4Choice.

I have been playing around with the Yahoo/Huffington Post/Slate presidential debate “mashup” site and I can tell you that it is not for the weak of heart.

The debate has been billed as “the first-ever online-only presidential mashup“.

The raw footage from the online debate in which Charlie Rose and Bill Maher ask the candidates questions on the usual topics has now been uploaded by Yahoo to its own web-based video editing service Jumpcut.

By login into this service one can “grab” the different videos and “splice and dice” the footage to create your own mashup.

According to Yahoo’s spokesman Brian Nelson,

“Users will be able to create their own mashups and post the footage onto their websites afterwards — that’s for the hardcore fans who want to engage with this video”.

And you have to be a “hardcore fan” to go through the entire process of grabbing, remixing and publishing a video because the interface is not very intuitive and the instructions are hard to find and follow.

It took me a while to put together this mashup where John Edwards, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton give their views of the insurance and drug industries lobbies’ roles in the creation of a new universal healthcare system.

I am sure that I have not yet scratched the surface regarding the potential of this new online video editing tool but I have to admit that despite all the problems it is pretty cool.

Today is the day! The Democratic presidential candidates get together at the University of Miami in a debate that will be broadcast in Spanish by Univision.

Although the questions will be translated to English and the candidates will answer also in English, it is expected that millions of Spanish-speaking viewers around the country will have a unique opportunity to see the candidates address issues of great importance to the Latino community.

And we plan to follow the debate very closely.

In fact, we (Los Blogueros) plan to open a Skypecast room and a chatroom during the debate in the hope that you will join us there to have an open conversation about the candidates and how they propose to address the issues that affect the Latino community.

There will also be a live audio stream of our Skypecast in case you do not use Skype (although I encourage you to download it at www.skype.com – it is free, easy to use and a very powerful tool for communicating with people around the world).

In any event, you can always use the chatroom if you do not have Skype.

So here it is:

Today Sunday Sept 9, 2007, at 7PM EST.

We will speak Spanish or English or Spanglish…..in fact, we will speak the three languages.

You can watch the debate online in Univision.

Join us in this Skypecast.

This is where we will Chat (no registration needed, just chat on).

And you can also listen to the Live Audio streaming of the Skypecast

We hope you can make it.

See you there!

Update: We will also be updating news of the debate via Twitter: www.twitter.com/eleccion2008

The mounted police of Washington, DC, in total disregard for the First Amendment rights of the people, charged in to break up an outdoor press conference and demonstration against the Iraq war.

Some 20 journalists and four or five protestors were attacked by the police while having a press conference in Lafayette Square.
Here is a video of the incident:

The gathering was totally pacific and the small crowd was not interfering with anything or causing any kind of disturbance.

According to the AFP, “The police suppressed the press conference. In the middle of the speeches, they grabbed the podium” erected in a park in front of the White House for the small gathering”.

Three people — Tina Richards, the mother of a marine who did two tours of duty in Iraq; Adam Kokesh, a leader of the Iraq Veterans Against the War group; and lawyer Ian Thompson, who is an organizer for ANSWER in Los Angeles — were arrested.

The ANSWER coalition is trying to rally support for an anti-war demonstration in Washington that is due to take place on September 15.

This is just one example of what the country is turning into under Bu$hCo’s fascist rule.