I thought this sort of thing might wait until after 11/02/04 ...

... but apparently, the Bush administration is worried enough about its election prospects that it's decided to go ahead and move forward with a crackdown on independent media, having seized servers in the UK that host more than twenty Indymedia websites.

This is, to say the least, rather unsettling, with the timing not only so close to the U.S. election but also on the cusp of the European Forum on Communications Rights. That happenstance in particular has been characterized as "ironic" by the UK Indymedia folks ... even more ironic (or perhaps merely coincidental ... or perhaps not) is the fact that Rackspace, the U.S. parent company of the UK server hosts, is based in ... wait for it ... Texas. Go figure. (For the record, I could not find evidence that anyone at the top at Rackspace supports W. or is even a Republican. But still.)

The ever-vigilant
Tess