@Auto: I think in light of recent developments (Awlaki assassination, etc.), there is no further doubt left that the US government absolutely intends to chill free speech on all levels. We’re quickly heading toward a situation where the smart people are going to get the hint and STFU while the stupid people who keep yakking end up getting hit with any of a million bullshit legal charges. The front lines of the assault was the corporate media, next are the smaller news orgs and independent journalists and preachers. Next in line will be online expressions of opinion through blogs and forums such as this. They haven’t got that far yet but it’s coming, mark my words. You can’t even get news online anymore. BBC used to have some wider-perspective stuff but now it’s just another outlet of “war on terror” bullshit. The meta-news search engines just return the same propaganda you’d get off the front of the NYT. Even a year ago, I could to go to Google News and click “World” and get a decent smattering of worldwide news not of US concern. Not today. Every single goddamn English-language news article on the net almost without exception is either about the US or something the US is doing to some other country. Predator drones. Assassinations. NAFTA. EU. ECB. UN. On and on. Even al-Jazeera - which used to be a good source of adversarial news perspective - has been taken over. Russia Today is one of the least-bad news sources still existing online but it’s only an accidental by-product of its being “anti-US” rather than “pro-news.” There has been a sharp, marked change in the quality of online news available in the English language over the course of the last year or so. I literally feel like I’m living in a complete news vacuum.
Clayton -