Tag: Blogger

Occupy ABC’s This Week

Update: link to a transcript of La Greca on This Week at DailyKos

DailyKos blogger Jesse LaGreca was eloquent and focused on ABC’s This Week this morning. I want to post the conversation about #OccupyWallStreet featuring Jesse, and come back a little later with my own thoughts.

To the question, “What is your plan? Are you going to harness this into a political movement?” – a question that keeps coming up, and misses how this movement is different, Jesse responded that OWS is really about “pushing the narrative that working people can no longer be ignored.” They’re not trying to be the politicians – the more important thing is for politicians to come out and listen to the people at OWS.

Tim Wu and the future of the Internet

Tim Wu explains the rise and fall of information monopolies in a conversation with New York Times blogger Nick Bilton. Author of The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires (Borzoi Books), Wu is known for the concept of “net neutrality.” He’s been thinking about this stuff for several years, and has as much clarity as anyone (which is still not much) about the future of the Internet.

I think the natural tendency would be for the system to move toward a monopoly control, but everything that’s natural isn’t necessarily inevitable. For years everyone thought that every republic would eventually turn into a dictatorship. So I think if people want to, we can maintain a greater openness, but it’s unclear if Americans really want that…. The question is whether there is something about the Internet that is fundamentally different, or about these times that is intrinsically more dynamic, that we don’t repeat the past. I know the Internet was designed to resist integration, designed to resist centralized control, and that design defeated firms like AOL and Time Warner. But firms today, like Apple, make it unclear if the Internet is something lasting or just another cycle.

Hossein Derakshan arrested?

According to Global Voices Advocacy, the active and highly visible Iranian blogger Hossein Derakshan (aka Hoder) has been arrested in Tehran and “is being investigated on suspicion of espionage for the state of Israel.” No posts on Hoder’s blog since October. Hoder’s been active in shining a light on other similar arrests. GV notes that the arrest hasn’t been confirmed by other news sources.