This is what you’ve come to Republican party: hysterical demagogues with no respect for the law, the constitution, or their fellow Americans.

Below is the text of my letter to Congressman Joe Wilson:

Rep. Wilson

You should be ashamed of yourself and apologize to the men and women of the great state of South Carolina, & the duly elected President of the United States for your abhorrent behavior during the President’s speech. During the past 8 years the democratically elected Congress was respectful throughout any appearance by the former President. It is surprisingly unshocking to see the Republican party unable to maintain, honesty, integrity, decorum or basic respect for the office of the President. It’s behavior like yours that made me leave the Republican party. The adherence to fearmongering, stalling and every underhanded tactic the party could use to amass more power. Power for what? amassing more power. What need have we of that? Does it help me ensure a better future for my sons? No. It serves only to feed more power to those who have shown over the last 10 years their inability to govern on behalf of their constituents but instead to govern on behalf of fear and profiteering.

It saddens me to see a party that once was a noble and inspiring group fall so far. Make an effort to truly do what is best for America and not the bottom line of a corporation. Your voting block is struggling financially, overwhelmed by medical bills and all you and your party can do is “stall” and say it’s fine. Last I checked you receive medical coverage from the government. What makes you more special than any other American? The elected representatives are supposed to be our brightest people, not our greediest.

Sincerely,

Chris O’Rourke
Father, Husband, American.

From WikiLeaks.be:

Wikileaks Press Release

WIKILEAKS.ORG DOWN AFTER EX-PARTE LEGAL ATTACK BY CAYMAN ISLANDS BANK

http://wikileaks.be/wiki/Wikileaks.org_under_injunction

Contacts: http://wikileaks.be/wiki/Contact

Mon Feb 18 00:00:00 GMT 2008

The following release has not been proofed due to time constraints.

Transparency group Wikileaks forcibly censored at ex-parte Californian
hearing — ordered to print blank pages — ‘wikileaks.org’ name
forcibly deleted from Californian domain registrar — the best justice Cayman
Islands money launderers can buy?

When the transparency group Wikileaks was censored in China last
year, no-one was too surprised. After all, the Chinese government
also censors the Paris based Reporters Sans Frontiers and New York
Based Human Rights Watch. And when Wikileaks published the secret
censorship lists of Thailand’s military Junta, no-one was too
surprised when people in that country had to go to extra lengths
to read the site. But on Friday the 15th, February 2008, in the
home of the free and the land of the brave, and a constitution which
states “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of
speech, or of the press”, the Wikileaks.org press was shutdown:

BANK JULIUS BAER & CO. LTD, a
Swiss entity; and JULIUS BAER BANK
AND TRUST CO. LTD, a Cayman Island ORDER GRANTING
entity, PERMANENT INJUNCTION

WIKILEAKS, an entity of unknown form;
WIKILEAKS.ORG, an entity of unknown
form; DYNADOT, LLC, a California
limited liability company; and DOES 1
through 10, inclusive,
[..]
IT IS HEREBY ORDERED:

[..]
Dynadot shall immediately clear and remove all DNS hosting
records for the wikileaks.org domain name and prevent the
domain name from resolving to the wikileaks.org website or
any other website or server other than a blank park page,
until further order of this Court.

The Cayman Islands is located between Cuba and Honduras. In July
2000, the United States Department of the Treasure Financial Crimes
Enforcement Network issued an advisory states stating that there
were “serious deficiencies in the counter-money laundering systems
of the Cayman Islands”, “Cayman Islands law makes it impossible for
the supervisory and regulatory authority to obtain information held
by financial institutions regarding their client’s identity”, “Failure
of financial institutions in the Cayman Islands to report suspicious
transactions is not subject to penalty” and that “These deficiencies,
among others, have caused the Cayman Islands to be identified by the
Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (The ‘FATF’) as
non-cooperative in the fight against money laundering”. As of 2006
the U.S. State Department listed the Cayman Islands in its money
laundering “Countries of Primary Concern”.

The Cayman’s case is not the first time Wikileaks has tackled
bad banks. In the second half of last year Wikileaks exposed over
$4,500,000,000′s worth of money laundering including by the former
president of Kenya, Daniel Arap Moi (see
http://wikileaks.be/wiki/The_looting_of_Kenya_under_President_moi
which became the Guardian’s front page story in September 2007 and
swung the Kenyan vote by 10% leading into the December 2007 election
and http://wikileaks.be/wiki/A_Charter_House_of_horrors reported
in the Nairobi paper The Standard and now the subject of a High
Court Case in Kenya).

To find an injunction similar to the Cayman’s case, we need to go
back to Monday June 15, 1971 when the New York Times published
excepts of of Daniel Ellsberg’s leaked “Pentagon Papers” and found
itself enjoined the following day. The Wikileaks injunction is the
equivalent of forcing the Times’ printers to print blank pages and
its power company to turn off press power. The supreme court found
the Times censorship injunction unconstitutional in a 6-3 decision.

The Wikileaks.org injunction is ex-parte, engages in prior restraint
and is clearly unconstitutional. It was granted on Thursday
afternoon by California district court judge White, Bush appointee
and former prosecutor.

The order was written by Cayman Island’s Bank Julius Baer
lawyers and was accepted by judge White without amendment, or
representations by Wikileaks or amicus. The case is over several
Wikileaks articles, public commentary and documents dating prior
to 2003. The documents allegedly reveal secret Julius Baer trust
structures used for asset hiding, money laundering and tax evasion.
The bank alleges the documents were disclosed to Wikileaks by
offshore banking whistleblower and former Vice President the Cayman
Island’s operation, Rudolf Elmer. Unable to lawfully attack Wikileaks
servers which are based in several countries, the order was served
on the intermediary Wikileaks purchased the ‘Wikileaks.org’ name through — California registrar Dynadot, who then
used its access to the internet website name registration system to delete the records for ‘Wikileaks.org’.
The order also enjoins every person who has heard about the order
from from even linking to the documents.

In order to deal with Chinese censorship, Wikileaks has many backup
sites such as wikileaks.be (Belgium) and wikileaks.de (Germany)
which remain active. Wikileaks never expected to be using
the alternative servers to deal with censorship attacks, from, of
all places, the United States.

The order is clearly unconstitutional and exceeds its jurisdiction.

Wikileaks will keep on publishing, in-fact, given the level of
suppression involved in this case, Wikileaks will step up publication
of documents pertaining to illegal or unethical banking practices.

Wikileaks has six pro-bono attorney’s in S.F on roster to deal with
a legal assault, however Wikileaks was given only hours notice “by email” prior
to the hearing. Wikileaks was NOT represented. Wikileaks pre-litigation
California council Julie Turner attended the start of hearing in a
personal capacity but was then asked to leave the court room.

White signed the order, drafted by the Cayman Islands bank’s lawyers without a
single amendment.

The injunction claims to be permanent, although the case is only
preliminary.

Wikileaks remains available publishing from non-US, non-Chinese
jurisdictions including http://wikileaks.cx/ and http://wikileaks.be/.
See http://wikileaks.cx/wiki/Wikileaks:Cover_Names for more.

http://wikileaks.cx/wiki/Bank_Julius_Baer_vs._Wikileaks

http://wikileaks.cx/wiki/images/Dynadot-injunction.pdf

http://wikileaks.cx/wiki/Die_Akten_des_Hurricane_Man

http://wikileaks.cx/wiki/Clouds_on_the_Cayman_tax_heaven”

Here’s a letter from former Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich that’s quite appropriate to the topic. We’ve hit a point where it’s not about political affiliation anymore. Democrats, Republicans, liberals and conservatives should all gather and watch as the founding principles of our nation are systematically destroyed (think I’m exaggerating? check out sites like rawstory.com (mainstream media in the US rarely broadcasts anything that goes against Bush anymore).

“Dear Supporter,
Today is the sixth anniversary of my “Prayer for America” speech. Please take a moment to read the speech or watch it on YouTube:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8528466337 …

In light of the events that have taken place since I wrote and delivered it on February 17, 2002, you will see that long before anyone else in Congress saw the danger our country was headed toward, I spoke out — truthfully and forcefully.

I need your help to continue to be the voice of the people. My primary election is on March 4th, just a little more than two weeks from now. Today’s newspaper is reporting, once again, that I am being outspent heavily in my efforts for re-election. What is not said is where the money is coming from: Corporate interests whose narrow concerns do not allow for peace, for health care for all, for workers’ rights. I can and will continue to speak out with your support.

The working men and women of my district are working hard to protect this seat, which belongs to them. They are going door to door throughout the neighborhoods of the Cleveland area. Just yesterday, hundreds of dedicated citizens from all walks of life fanned out all across the District to spread the word about the importance of holding on to this Congressional seat so their voices will continue to be heard and represented in Washington.

With a million dollars being spent against us on negative ads, false claims, and misrepresentations, we need additional funds to make sure that our message gets on television, radio, and through the mails.

Please contribute as generously as you can at http://www.kucinich.us/contribute.html to ensure that the people continue to be represented in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Let our Prayer for America on this day in 2008 be one of determination that we will save our government — and this Congressional seat — from corporate control.

Dennis”

Great words from a true American. On the positive side the internet is ours. By ours I mean every free thinking person on the planet with access. We will NOT be stopped. There are already dozens of mirrors of wikileaks and every other site dedicated to telling the truth. Strike one site down and hundreds will rise to speak out against tyranny, fascism and other anti-freedom acts. Now if you’ll excuse me I’m getting back to teaching my son what America is really about (it has nothing to do with worshipping the government blindly).

What it really boils down to is the fact that much like the RIAA or MPAA instead of joining WITH the companies using this bandwidth to offer amazing new technology and applications is the Telco’s want to get continually paid for upgrades they’d already planned to do that will make their backbones cheaper in the longrun.

For those of you in the Pacific Northwest you’re familiar with this business model thanks to Starbucks founder Howard Shultz. Shultz demanded that Seattle taxpayers pay for a new arena for the Sonics or he’d move the team. Apparently the sports team economics of “taxpayer money subsidizes my massively profitable business so I can then charge taxpayers more for tickets” is now being examined by the Telcos.

Why should Comcast or Verizon spend money to increase their profitability when they can just have the consumers pay for the upgrades?

On the one hand the corporate arguments do make a little bit of sense: Some internet companies are using massive amounts of bandwidth (YouTube, Google Video etc) but they are free to consumers. However with a closer look we see that with Telcos being able to make companies pay to use bandwidth free sites like those mentioned above will likely go to a pay model and we’re suddenly right back where we were in the late 90′s.

This debate has brought together the far right and far left in totally new ways as well as given us the great bizarre quotes from PR hacks in the industry; like the Verizon Exec who implied that by charging high bandwidth users more money that small “garage” developers would have a greater ability to create that killer app. So a garage developer could make a “killer app” like basecamp or sidejobtrack that gets a massive amount of traffic and pay for it how exactly? With great traffic comes great bandwidth responsibility.

Get off it Telcos. If you don’t like your own business model get out of the business. Don’t shift your inability to want to part with a buck to consumers (i.e. anyone who pays you for your service) it is not our job to subsidize you. Corporations don’t deserve welfare (amtrak, airlines and subsidized farmers this includes you as well). Don’t let Congress allow the FCC to drop the ball on communications regulating yet again.