We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Mexican Protest Site Censored by GoDaddy — with the U.S. Embassy's Help

Click here to access article by Danny O'Brien from Electronic Frontier Foundation. 

After an extensive protest against GoDaddy in late 2011 the corporation appeared to back off from its support of SOPA, a bill introduced in Congress in October of 2011 which would have allowed the U.S. attorney general to seek a court order against a targeted offshore Web site that would, in turn, be served on Internet providers such as GoDaddy to disappear the website. There was such a storm of opposition against the bill that it was shelved. (See this, this, and this.)

But it appears that they will cooperate anyway with US authorities who, it turn, are cooperating with Mexican authorities by blocking a Mexican protest site.
The Mexican website 1dmx.org,,,was set up in the wake of a set of controversial December 1st 2012 protests against the inauguration of the new President of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto. For a year, the site served as a source of information, news, discussion and commentary from the point of view of the protestors. As the anniversary of the protests approached, the site grew to include organized campaign against proposed laws to criminalize protest in the country, as well as preparations to document the results of a memorial protest, planned for December 1, 2013.

On December 2nd, 2013, the site disappeared offline. The United States host, GoDaddy, suspended the domain with no prior notice. GoDaddy told its owners that the site was taken down "as part of an ongoing law enforcement investigation."