Cindy Sheehan, board member of the Progressive Democrats of America, a group which tries to bring progressives into the Democratic party fold, recently challenged Democrats to impeach the President (3m5s of audio; a transcript follows). Thanks to Fred Nguyen and WBAI for the audio. Today’s Democracy Now! mentioned Sheehan’s statement, but did not play the audio.

In case you don’t believe me that she’s a PDA board member, check out the head shot on this blog entry. That head shot comes from Sheehan’s entry on the PDA’s website. So as long as the picture works, she’s probably still on the board. Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) is also on the board there. If they have board meetings maybe Sheehan can convince Conyers to support impeachment now rather than another round of the Democrat delaying tactic (the same one used around election time by Democrats and their supporters which says progressives should delay their criticism until after the Democrats are elected into office. This ensures that criticism does little good).

One wonders what’s more effective at getting results progressives say they want: serving on the board of the PDA (and the commensurate connections to people in power), or speaking truth to power openly in public and on the record?

Here’s a transcript of the audio:
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The RIAA wants to avoid court and get the accused to agree to settlements. To that end, the RIAA has sent a letter to ISPs asking for information and offering a possible discount (“opportunity for an early decreased settlement amount”) to would-be defendants (“targeted users”).

In a letter (which has the recipient information blacked out) the RIAA says that if ISPs hand over at least 180 days of logs, customer names and addresses, and pass along a fill-in-the-blank RIAA letter directly to the customer accused of copyright infringement, the accused may receive a $1,000 or more discount off a pre-litigation settlement price. Ray Beckerman hasn’t had time to examine the letter in detail, but offers this short list of some of the letter’s claims:

• creation of a new “Pre-Doe settlement option”;
• it will only make the “Pre-Doe settlement option” available to customers of ISP’s who agree to preserve their logs for 180 days;
• the “Pre-Doe” option will supposedly allow settlement at a reduced amount, with a discount of $1000 or more, if they settle before a John Doe lawsuit is brought;
• the RIAA will be launching a web site for “early settlements”, www.p2plawsuits.com;
• the letter asks the ISP’s to notify the RIAA if they have previously “misidentified a subscriber account in response to a subpoena” or became aware of “technical information… that causes you to question the information that you provided in response to our clients’ subpoena”;
• it requires ISP’s to notify the RIAA “as early as possible” as to whether they will enter the 180 day/”pre-Doe” plan;
• it mentioned that there has been confusion over how ISP’s should respond to the RIAA’s subpoenas;
• it noted that ISP’s have identified “John Does” who were not even subscribers of the ISP at the time of the infringement; and
• it requested that ISP’s furnish their underlying log files as well as just the names and addresses.

BoingBoing.net asks:

At what point do we just abandon any pretense of making peace with these gangsters? When will it be time to declare war on them, to engage in file-sharing not because we love music, but because we hate the record companies?

Congratulations to the Electronic Frontier Foundation which just won an important judgement against drug giant Eli Lilly. Eli Lilly tried to stop a number of websites from publishing leaked documents about Zyprexa, Eli Lilly’s top-selling drug. The judgement is available and the zyprexa.pbwiki.com wiki which challenges Eli Lilly is still online.

From EFF’s press release on their victory:

The Zyprexa documents were leaked from an ongoing product liability lawsuit against Eli Lilly. The internal documents allegedly show that Eli Lilly intentionally downplayed the drug’s side effects, including weight gain, high blood sugar, and diabetes, and marketed the drug for “off-label” uses not approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The documents were the basis for a front-page story in the New York Times in December of last year, and electronic copies are readily available from a variety of Internet sources. EFF’s client posted links to one set of copies on a wiki devoted to the controversy that were part of extensive, in-depth analysis from a number of citizen journalists.

More on Zyprexa case from the EFF.

John Walsh on who was left out of the recent anti-war demonstration:

What is the matter with Democratic politicians, you may say. Nothing, as such. And the politicians speaking at the rally were among the best that the timid Dems have to offer – Maxine Waters, John Conyers and Dennis Kucinich, for example. But these Democrats do not represent the Democratic Party; they are an idealistic few on its fringe. To have only Democrats and no others is to create the false impression that the Democratic Party is a vehicle for peace. And it creates false hopes about what the Dems will do without mighty pressure.

I remember when the anti-war movement in the US went on hold to stump for pro-war Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) because he was the “viable” candidate to get Pres. Bush out of office. Some of the most vocal anti-war speakers are, after all, advocates for the Democratic Party. Walsh mentions the “Progressive” Democrats of America which I’ve written about in the past.

Walsh’s essay also reminds me of the debates on NOW (2 2-candidate debates) in that both the essay and the NOW show focused on messengers left out of something more widely watched. It was clear then as it is now that the Democrats need to be pressured to oppose the war.

I’ve been told that the Democrats went along with the pro-war message because they were in the minority and that (somehow) meant they had no choice. I didn’t believe it then because I knew a more convincing reason: the Democrats get their money from the same place the Republicans do, and those funders (whether wealthy individuals or corporations) benefit from the war. Now that the Democrats have some weight to throw around in Congress, it’s important to pressure them to throw that weight in the right direction.