democracy now website blocked ?

Submitted by huxwell on Wed, 08/12/2010 - 11:15am

Check out whether you can get the front page of "Democracy Now" grassroots news site.

http://www.democracynow.org/

I only could get the audio podcast page up once this morning.
The second attempt gives me only a blank page.

I hope it's just a glitch, and not a "blankout".

Geography: 
Global/International
Keywords: 
media war
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Comments

Submitted by Flowerpower on Wed, 08/12/2010 - 12:07pm

it was up when I just checked - hopefully just a glitch. I hadn't even heard about the cables showing U.S. manipulation of Copenhagen.

Submitted by takver on Wed, 08/12/2010 - 1:18pm

I got the white screen error too, a couple of hours ago, but the site is now up.

US constitutional attorney and blogger at Salon.com Glenn Greenwald was interviewed by Amy Goodman. Here are his closing remarks:

GLENN GREENWALD: Well, I just want to underscore how alarming everything is that you just described, both in that report and in your earlier one, which is, whatever you think of WikiLeaks, they’ve never been charged with a crime, let alone indicted or convicted. And yet, look at what has happened to them.

They’ve been essentially removed from the internet, not just through a denial of service attacks that are very sophisticated, but through political pressure applied to numerous countries. Their funds have been frozen, including funds donated by people around the world for his—for Julian Assange’s defense fund and for WikiLeaks’s defense fund. They’ve had their access to all kinds of accounts cut off. Leading politicians and media figures have called for their assassination, their murder, to be labeled a terrorist organization.

What’s really going on here is a war over control of the internet and whether or not the internet can actually serve what a lot of people hoped its ultimate purpose was, which was to allow citizens to band together and democratize the checks on the world’s most powerful factions. That’s what this really is about. It’s why you see Western government, totally lawlessly, waging what can only be described as a war on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange outside the bounds of any constraints, because that’s what really is at stake here.

If they want to prosecute them, they should go to court and do it through legal means. But this extralegal persecution ought to be very alarming to every citizen in every one of these countries, because it essentially is pure authoritarianism and is designed to prevent the internet from being used as its ultimate promise, which is providing a check on unconstrained political power.

Watch or read the full Rush transcript:
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/12/7/glenn_greenwald_julian_assange_arr...