MSNBC: Fighting Back....Dem's are harnessing the power of the blogosphere

[truthpusher]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8840684/site/newsweek/

Fighting Back
An Ohio special election result shows how Democrats are harnessing the power of the blogosphere.
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WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY
By Eleanor Clift
Newsweek
Updated: 4:56 p.m. ET Aug. 5, 2005
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Aug. 5, 2005 - No fewer than three esteemed political reporters from The Washington Post were in the audience taking notes on a steamy Thursday afternoon at a forum called “Reflections of a Blogger,” sponsored by the New Politics Institute, a progressive think tank. There were plenty of other news stories to pursue, notably increased violence in Iraq that claimed 21 Marines in two days and a wave of new polls showing declining confidence in President Bush’s leadership. In one survey, taken by Public Agenda before the latest spasm of violence, 82 percent of Americans said they worry “a lot” or “somewhat” that the Iraq war is taking too many lives.

Two days earlier, an antiwar Democrat had come close to winning a special election in Ohio for a congressional seat assumed to be safe for Republicans. Former Marine reservist Paul Hackett, who returned from Iraq to run for Congress, had gotten a huge boost from bloggers around the country. Leading the charge was Markos Moulitsas, founder of the progressive Daily Kos, which attracts hundreds of thousands of daily visits and is considered one of the most popular political blogs on the Internet. For Democrats desperate to find their way back to a winning coalition, Moulitsas, 33, has emerged as one of the most creative thinkers and activists in the progressive ranks. The Post team, along with reporters from other national publications and scores of political operatives, had come to get a glimpse of the future.

Moulitsas is opposed to the Iraq war but says that isn’t what drew him to Hackett. “It’s not about ideology, pro-war, antiwar, it makes no difference,” he insisted. “In the online world, we need Democrats to stand up, not be afraid of Republicans, not be afraid of the right-wing noise machine … We don’t care about ideology. We care that you stand up for the party and don’t run scared.” He pointed out that bloggers backed Democrat Stephanie Herseth in South Dakota, who, he says, ran a Republican Lite campaign. “We’re pragmatic,” he says. If candidates aren’t 100 percent on the environment or they’re kind of iffy on choice, progressives should overlook these differences for what Moulitsas terms “the greater good,” which is restoring the Democrats to a governing majority.

The national Democratic Party had written off the Ohio seat because the district is the second-most Republican in the state, but Moulitsas and like-minded bloggers saw it as a chance to put everything they’d been saying to the test. They didn’t expect to win, though there was always that hope, but if they could turn a foregone Republican conclusion into a close race where the GOP had to spend money and sweat the outcome, that would be victory enough. The Republicans didn’t build their majorities overnight, and it was time for progressives to take a stand. Hackett had zero name recognition at the outset, but he quickly became known in the blogosphere, which raised $400,000 for his race. Every time the other side tried to “Swiftboat” him--using the tactics employed against John Kerry’s Vietnam record in the 2004 race--the bloggers struck back.

(snip)

complete story: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8840684/site/newsweek/

[wisteria]

1. This is nothing more than a fluff piece.

To read it you would think Moulitsas's Daily Kos was the only blog site responsible for Hackette's impressive showing in the Ohio race. This does nothing but make Moulitsas's head even bigger. Please someone, e-mail this Cliff woman recommendations for other blog sites that aren't biased and really write and post thought provoking and researched pieces.

[mntleo2]

15. Corraling Is One Way To Filter

Corraling is my term because I think it demonstrates what some would censorers would like to do and indeed they have proposed it before the FCC. This is where ISPs have AOL-like areas where, when you log on, you get their home page and all their links. If you want to go "outside" those links into the larger Net, you pay more money, sort of like what you do now with cable and long distance. This is a very real way of corraling people into a place that only allows the choices of the ISP to be viewed. They can say it is not censoring since all you have to do is pay more money to get out. Censoring is already being done with search engines such as Google where the highest bidders gets the first page spots when you are looking for results. I use Metacrawler, but still they are censored I believe.

An argument against this might be that paying more money to access outside areas IS censoring because some people cannot afford to get to perhaps important information they need and if we are going to be democratic, all need access. Since the Internet was paid for by taxpayers to begin with, it is something that should belong to The People. However already proprietary companies are quietly moving into the FCC and other agencies to corrode the way it is and take the airwaves for themselves.

It is no conspiracy theory that the corporate media would love to curtail the blogosphere. It is already being done. They use complicated technical language and legalese in the hopes the average user will not understand ~ or think they would not understand.

My two cenhts

Cat In Seattle

[wli]

2. i.e. the neocons are planning to censor the internet

Or if not, to shut it down entirely.

[Amonester]

3. That's one misdeed they can't do because the net

is independent and has backbones inside many continents. Plus, most "Fortune 500" corporations rely on it to do most of their business operations 24/7. Remember "Mafia Boy" (the young pirate who paralyzed the net with a virus a few years ago)? His crime caused many corporations to lose tens of millions in a very short period.

I wouldn't bet the Conservatives would ever succeed at shutting it down, even if doing so would ever come to be their wildest dream...

[wli]

5. the "shutdown" can consist of shutting down personal websites etc.

That would be easy enough to do with regulations and so on.

[Amonester]

6. Yes. Personal sites where the servers reside inbounds. :-(

And their owners as well. Then, there would still be a lot of personal sites operating from abroad. But the owners would have to be exiles. The members also (unless they would manage to connect for short periods of time on mobiles through wireless links).

Feels like 1984. Big Brother??

[wli]

7. there are tricks to block (e.g. nullrouting) foreign websites

Basically, the way it goes is consolidate the ISP's, control them from right-wing fronts (e.g. defense contractors), then they all collude in nullrouting foreign blogs and unfriendly foreign news sites.

Then legislate domestic blogs into censorable positions (e.g. nobody can self-host their own webserver by law or collusive corporate policy) and the internet is locked down except for realtime chat over other protocols (e.g. IRC).

Then those can be monitored and either the Homeland Offense Gestapo can disappear anyone who says the wrong things on them or the ISP oligopoly can ban anyone who says such things off the net.

Then there's crypto. All that has to be done there is legislating it out of existence. Sniffers watch for encrypted protocols, and the Homeland Offense Gestapo can disappear anyone who uses them.

There's Bushler's plan (or something very close to it). Any questions?

[jvaska]

8. very wrong

They are not going to shut down the net as y'all would have each other believe - absolutely ludicrous.

You guys go on an on about doom and gloom, I know because I've been a member for years.

This particular subject, you are so completely wrong. Sheesh...move away from the computer and read a book or talk to your neighbor. Interface with reality.

[wli]

9. well, give me something to go on

What I've got for this thus far is:

1. the biggest ISP's forbid self-hosting of DNS, email, or websites
2. large-scale mergers are going on
3. anti-blog propaganda is showing up on TV

It's not much to go on. All I can really do is infer that political opposition is organizing and communicating over the net, and so the motive is there, and a few small piece of evidence show movement in that direction.

I'd love to be wrong. Could you bring in a counter-argument to calm my fears on this front?

[VegasWolf]

17. I agree with your analysis, if the ISPs are government regulated

and controlled ( in our case of the US, this would be extreme
loony right wing ) then they can filter what they want at the ISP
node. I'm wondering if satellite based ISPs, like Direct TV,
based in a foreign country would work.

[rman]

10. not shut down, but control/filter the content

with as cited reasons: spam, viruses, id-theft, hacking, terrorist communications. It would be perfectly in line with the trend of consolidation of corporate control over the media.


The Guardian
We ignore internet at our peril, Murdoch warns editors
Chris Tryhorn, City correspondent
Thursday April 14, 2005
http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,14173,1459697,00.html

"In a speech to American editors in Washington, Mr Murdoch issued a stark warning to the industry, arguing that the web was "a fast-developing reality we should grasp".

"He said consumers wanted "control over the media, instead of being controlled by it", pointing to the proliferation of website diaries known as "blogs" and message boards."




What makes you think simply saying "you are so completely wrong" will convince anyone that you are correct?

[Amonester]

14. A very telling quote (why we're not surprised)

(Murdoch) said consumers wanted "control over the media, instead of being controlled by it"

Of course, except for the DSM leaks, Mr. Murdoch does not want to give the consumers of his Corporate Media outlets real "fair and balanced" news delivered by real journalists and real reporters.

I hate to think we'd soon need to use predefined cuing codes to communicate on the net. Anyone interested in using "Bush is so clever" as a decode for "** is such a moran"?

That would s**k big time.

[fasttense]

11. Move along you conspiracy nuts, there is nothing to see here

:sarcasm:

And I'll throw in an insult about never reading or talking to people to boot. That should sure make my point. :sarcasm:

[Barrett808]

16. Welcome to DU, jvaska!

:hi:

[gratuitous]

4. Blogs have two very big drawbacks for the Repressive Right

They reward folks who can post coherent thoughts and come up with new material, and blogs also create a record of those thoughts. Ever wonder why Rush and the rest don't offer transcripts of their shows? The very last thing they want is anyone going back and checking up on them.

[fasttense]

12. Very good point gratuitous.

I've always wondered about Rush and his lack of transcripts.

The right has always been nervous about the Internet. Remember back in December when the right wing wacko pundits were going around saying "bloggers were not accountable for what they said." It was in reference to the repukes rigging the election. They kept pushing the idea that people communicating on the Internet must be held accountable. That always bothered me. That's like saying people who talk in coffee houses and across fences should be held accountable. It was like they couldn't stand the free flow of ideas because they couldn't control it and hold you and I accountable for talking to each other.

[Barkley]

13. Clinton's finest hour was when he got impeached

His approval rating was at 68%. People understood what the right-wing Republicans were up to with the Lewinsky scandal: they wanted Clinton to resign.

But Clinton stood up to the right-wing nuts and refused to resign.

And that was his finest hour.