Here is a policy from GoDaddy, a domain registrar:

QUESTION: Why is GoDaddy.com blocking people in certain countries from accessing its site?

ANSWER: GoDaddy.com actively blocks the following countries from using our services due to U.S. government policies:

Cuba
Iran
Iraq
Libya
North Korea
Sudan
Syria

The U.S. Department of State has declared the governments of these states to be sponsors of international terrorism

How screwed up is this? Bush’s inaugural address told us we are the purveyors of liberty. That must mean that we want these oppressive governments to fail so that their people can be free. Yet, according to GoDaddy’s interpretation, we are to deny those citizens the instruments of their liberty. As Hoder says:

I wonder whether this is what president Bush considers standing with a nation for their freedom. Who else is using these websites other than mostly secular, freedom-loving Iranian youth?

By the way, in a press release on Jan. 12 GoDaddy boasts: “Go Daddy has found its SSL Certificates reaching into virtually every corner of the globe, with new orders coming daily from Europe, Australia, the MidEast, South America and Japan.” Well, not every corner.

[The link is from the irc for webcred: webcred at irc.freenode.net. See Hoder‘s bloggage.]

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ThereIsNoCrisis is a social security resource worth noting. It maintains — guess what? — that the Bush administration is trumping up the Social Security crisis.

Metaphilm has a bunch of whacky film interpretations. For example, did you know that in The Fight Club, Edward Norton plays grown-up Calvin and Brad Pitt plays grown-up Hobbes?

Rebecca Mackinnon has posted an excellent FAQ about the conference on blogging, journalism and credbiility being put on by Berkman, American Library Association and the Shorenstein Center. Bonus: A photo at the bottom of Berkman Fellows eating a kitten for breakfast. (Very funny comments on the Kitten Breakfast at EthicallyChallenged.)

Technorati tags: social security, metaphilm, berkman

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NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adminstration]
Loses Funding to Gather Long-Term Climate Data

Congress has eliminated funding for a fledgling network of 110 observation stations intended to provide a definitive, long-term climate record for the United States.

If only terrorists were behind global warming!

This comes from Science (subscription required), via Gary Stock.

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You want to know? You really want to know? Go ask Matt Stoller…

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NPR’s hourly news just played a snippet of Bush saying something about “an election in Iraq,” but he stumbled ever so slightly: “An er-election in Iraq.” We can only hope W was on his way to a full spoonerism: “An erection in I-lack.”

Sigh. Such are the petty joys to which I have been reduced.

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Frances Moore Lappé, author of Diet for a Small Planet — a book that influenced my wife and me waaaay back when — has published an important essay that out-Lakoffs Lakoff. Here’s a summary-by-snippets:

Lakoff’s central idea is that conservatives see the world through a “strict father” frame emphasizing discipline, self-reliance, forceful defense, while progressives see the world through a “nurturant parent” frame—supportive, nourishing, emphasizing mutual responsibility.

…Certainly, much of Lakoff’s advice about communicating progressive ideas is powerfully insightful and right on target.

But two big dangers loom.

First: Too narrowly focusing on getting the frame right might delude progressives into believing that’s all they need to win, …

…Second, the frame Lakoff identifies with progressives – “nurturant parent” – itself needs critical thought.

Nurturant parent – what could be worse for progressives?

They’re already stereotyped as coddlers of the lazy poor; dubbed “bleeding hearts” who refuse to require people to take responsibility for themselves…

… Maybe, in many respects, we’re moving beyond hierarchy, which any parent-centered frame necessarily must be…

…We need to ask: What frames best embrace the growing appreciation that human beings are going beyond one-directional communication, moving from “one-to-many” directives toward “many-to-many” multi-logues? What frame suggests mutuality – mutual responsibility, cooperation, teamwork, dialogue, synergy, inter-connectedness, and the co-creation of meaning?

Any parent frame fails the test; it is inevitably one-directional, and hierarchical. So let’s bury the family metaphor and search for a more robust frame…

…let’s reframe the entire conversation to one that begins with a definition of citizens as responsible grown-ups, not helpless children. In this progressive moral vision we strive to live in strong communities…

There is much, much more good stuff in this article. For example, I’ve left out the bits about Open Source, reframing the ecological question, and how the crisis of the Catholic church fits in. This is, IMO, a must read. In fact, I feel bad about attempting to summarize it. [Thanks to Jock Gill for the link.]

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“There’s an interesting parallel between Bush and Richard Nixon. While Nixon was clearly a superor statesman and in many ways a more intelligent politician, what they share is a kind of boldness in how they emote their insecurities. What we’re finding with George Bush — part of what’s familiar to people and that adds to his likability for many — is that there’s a commonality of deep insecurity and his handling it with a kind of bravado. What they both did is handle things with a similar certainty — certainty being the ‘disease of kings.'”

I like this not only for its insight but because it so clearly — and helpfully — reflects the worldview of a professional actor. It’s a snippet of an interview in the Boston Globe with Sean Penn, conducted by Ty Burr. (The whole interview is worth reading.)

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Hoder reports that Iran has cut off access by Iranians to all blogging services and some social software sites, including Orkut. As Dan Brickley writes, “There go 65,000+ Iranian blogs (per blogcensus) and 7%+ of Orkut’s user base, in a flip of a switch.” Hoder suggests some actions we can take, including having the EU and US demand an end to Net censorship during their negotiations with the government.

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Right Wing News lists the 40 most obnoxious quotes of the year. Most but not all are from the left. And some are truly obnoxious. If we did a left-centric one, we could fill it up just with Zell Miller-isms…

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From Reuters:

CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) – President Bush, under pressure over the pace and scale of American aid to Asian tsunami victims, abruptly raised the U.S. contribution to $350 million on Friday, 10 times the amount pledged just two days ago.

Good. That’s up a lot from the ludicrous $4M we offered five days ago, the boost to a shameful $15M, and the upping of that to the merely disgraceful $35M. It’s still not nearly enough from a country that claims to be the world’s economic, military and moral leader; before the election, Congress allotted $13.6 billion to rebuild states after the horrendous hurricane season. I understand that no other countries were contributing to the Help Florida fund, and that countries have a first responsibility to their own, but how about a little proportionality here?

And why the hell did it take pressure to get Bush to begin to do the right thing? It took Bush three days to announce the $35M. He is addressing this catastrophe through press releases. What does it take to make George W. Bush’s heart hurt?

When Bush was first elected he had been out of the country once or maybe twice, to Mexico and Canada. He was the son of an ambassador and a man of enormous personal wealth, yet he never bothered to leave the continent. (The rumor is that when he was elected, he didn’t have a passport.) This is usually taken as an indication of his utter lack of curiosity, definitive of his own special brand of stupidity. But it is also a sign of his lack of caring, his lack of a sense of connection to those unlike him.

This is just further confirmation that whatever a person declares himself in public to be is exactly what he is not. As W likes to say, he’s a “compassionate conservative.”

I don’t claim to know W’s soul. I could be dead wrong about him. Maybe he’s crying himself to sleep. But his actions suggest not.

I’d like to see him get on a plane for Sri Lanka.

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