Please Vote

Shocking but not surprising: in a continuing narrowing of our civil rights in the United States, the Pentagon has further undercut the First Amendment by directing military personnel not to post on MySpace or YouTube and not to exercise their right to free speech through blogging.

Please vote in the upcoming presidential election and help us to be the democratic, ethical world leader that we claim to be. Read more here, and take a look at some of these blogs for an upclose look at the war in Iraq, both from positive and critical points of view.

My point is not to debate the war, but to note the slow but steady disintegration of our First Amendment rights. Don't even get me started on Guantanomo Bay.

Comments

dorothee said…
Narrowing civil rights (cf. Patriot Act) and freedom of speech, but maintaining the amendment that allows almost everyone to own a gun for their "self-defence". What self-defence? Claiming that the original idea of this amendment was to enable the citizens to defend themselves from their government, in case it f**** up and making fun of European countries who (mostly) aren't allowed gun possession like in the US and therefore have to trust their governments... (like a normal citizen could fight an army at all)

Funny thing is, I think there's more democracy, freedom of speech and civil rights in Europe than in the US right now.

Please do vote! I would if I could, but I'm not American.
Janet said…
thanks for your thoughts.
dorothee said…
You're welcome. Hope I wasn't too straight-forward!
TK said…
I'm just catching up on blogs, and news, and I didn't know that. My little brother is in the Army and the only way he communicates is through his MySpace page (which is why I never talk to him). Besides free speech, this is completely ignoring that the main method of communication for these 19 and 20 year olds is through mediums like blogging. This will effectively cut off communication between people like my brother and his friends at home.