The Nuremberg Files drama continues as a huge coalition of reproductive rights groups files an amicus brief asking the US 9th Circuit Court of appeals to reconsider its ruling of First Amendment protection for the NF‘s terrorism. [Choices Campus Community]

Slate‘s The Best Political Weblogs looks like a very interesting feature, although their declaration that by featuring selected blogs they are somehow democratizing journalism, would be more convincing if they actually featured weblogs from people other than their well established, published journalist buddies.

Weather Underground: Welcome to The Weather Underground made me nearly fall out of my chair laughing: it’s a weather forecasting site! Best of all were the big corporate sponsors for the Weather Underground: revolutionary anti-capitalism is brought to you by… NextCard VISA!

As legendary capitalist-punk Johnny Disagreeable put it, Leftist gits! There’s no weather underground!

Oh my God, a Salon.com columnist has actually said something intelligent. Mad props to Andrew Leonard for, well, making the exact same point I was making: the kitschy appropriation of rhetoric and images from liberation movements, by foundering Internet corporations, is both outrageous and pathetic. As Leonard says (emphasis added), the Internet can have many benefits for democratic interactions between people,

But Napster, the company, is not about promoting democracy. Napster is about making a buck, or, to be precise, a whole lot of bucks, by exploiting a new distribution paradigm. The company’s use of ’60s rhetoric — such as its plan to hold a teach-in on April 2 to educate people on why it should be allowed to stay in operation — in the service of its commercial interests is repugnant and crass. And our personal right to be able to get stuff for free online? Come on, people. We’re not talking about stopping bombs falling in Vietnam, are we?

As a side note, it turns out that the Napster march will be on April 3–which happens also to be Michael Tchong’s self-declared Take Back the Net day. As it turns out, I’m not the only one that noticed the incredibly offensive appropriation of the name of Take Back the Night, one of the world’s oldest and most powerful marches against sexual violence. Tchong has quietly changed the name of his campaign to Back the Net Day. I hope he got to read some really nasty hate mail first.

There is a person on IndyMedia beginning a series of articles on Building a Global Grassroots Infrastructure-1, development of the IMC network which promises to be a good exploration of how the Internet is enabling real democratic mass communications. In short, how we can take all the Internet execs’ phony rhetoric about revolution and start making it into a reality.