‘User-generated content such as blogs, video-file sharing site – from YouTube to MySpace – transforms the Internet and media.’
Yeah. We’ve been picked!!! –
“For seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, Time’s Person of the Year for 2006 is you,” the magazine’s Lev Grossman wrote.
The magazine has put a mirror on the cover of its “Person of the Year” issue, released on Monday, “because it literally reflects the idea that you, not us, are transforming the information age,” Editor Richard Stengel said in a statement.”[.]
Influential also-rans
You beat out candidates including Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, China’s President Hu Jintao, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and James Baker, the former U.S. Secretary of State who led Washington’s bipartisan Iraq Study Group.[.]
Not for long. Savor the moment. BushCheney administration and spokesperson Newt Gingrich are mounting an assault. The Geneva Convention is considered “quaint”. Looks like free speech could fall in the same category.
Gingrich has not recanted: Free speech should be curtailed
“Gingrich said the threat of biological or nuclear attack requires America to consider curbs to speech to fight terrorists, if it is to protect the society that makes the First Amendment possible.
“Our friends at the ‘ACLU left,’ of course, were staggered at this concept,” Gingrich told an audience of Republicans at a Christmas banquet. “How could we talk about anything less than 100 percent free speech? How could we consider in any way thinking about this issue?”
Gingrich cited last month’s ejection of six Muslim scholars from a plane in Minneapolis for suspicious behavior, which included reports they prayed before the flight and had sat in the same seats as the Sept. 11 hijackers.
“Those six people should have been arrested and prosecuted for pretending to be terrorists,” Gingrich said. “And the crew of the U.S. airplane should have been invited to the White House and congratulated for being correct in the protection of citizens.”
Meanwhile Thinkprogress reports an
“EXCLUSIVE: White House Forbids Publication Of Op-Ed On Iran By Former Bush Official.”
“Middle East analyst Flynt Leverett, who served under President Bush on the National Security Council and is now a fellow at the New America Foundation, revealed today that the White House has been blocking the publication of an op-ed he wrote for the New York Times. The column is critical of the administration’s refusal to engage Iran.
Leverett’s op-ed has already been cleared by the CIA, where he was a senior analyst. Leverett explained, “I’ve been doing this for three and a half years since leaving government, and I’ve never had to go to the White House to get clearance for something that I was publishing as long as the CIA said, `Yeah, you’re not putting classified information.'”
Mr. Leverett, how about blogging your Op-Ed over at TWN
Leverett will appear on C-Span, Moday 18 December.
What say you. Are we making a difference, giving them hell, f%^u, STFU, and generally keeping their feet to the fire?
