Citizens mobilise support for gay soldiers serving in the US army

DON'T ASK DON'T TELL POLICY

Lady Gaga is once again campaigning against the « Don’t ask, don’t tell » policy. The American singer has posted a new video on the Internet appealing to senators to repeal this law that forces gay soldiers to hide their sexual orientation.

Mobilisation to end the gay taboo in the army has recently been revived with the publication of a study carried out by the Pentagon. The report says the large majority of soldiers are ready to accept the end to this law that enforces silence.

This organization believes that the time for reflection is over and it is now time to take action. It is asking web users to contact their senator to demand a repeal of “Don’t ask, don’t tell’ by the end of the year.

Many soldiers are involved in this campaign. This site is collecting accounts from veterans, gay or otherwise. This former air force pilot pays tribute to the bravery of these soldiers’ who fought for the freedom of American people but did not have the right to freedom of speech themselves.

But this retired lieutenant colonel remains opposed to raising this taboo and even criticizes the fact that homosexual soldiers serve in the army. He talks of Bradley Manning, the person suspected of leaking documents to the site Wikileaks, and describes him as an unruly and openly gay soldier who ended up betraying his country by divulging documents that placed the United States in an embarrassing situation.

THE WIKILEAKS DOCUMENTS

The site Wikileaks has been gradually releasing over 251 00 confidential diplomatic cables since Sunday. Everyone is talking about these documents but it is not easy to find them on the web. We take a look at the sites that have allowed us to access this information and above all decipher it.

You can find all of the diplomatic cables made public by the media on the Wikileaks web site. Only a few hundred documents are currently available via “cable viewer”. They are sorted by date and also by degree of confidentiality.

Newspapers working in partnership with Wikileaks have also posted online numerous sources of information on these confidential documents. British daily “The Guardian” in particular has set up this extremely practical interactive map on its web site. In just a few clicks you can see where the secret cables were sent from and the countries concerned.

Owni.fr has developed an application called « State Logs » that uses some of the cables published by Wikileaks. It is intended to be a community-based tool as web users can comment on the confidential documents that have been posted online and also grade them. The site also has live blogging so you can receive news updates on this subject in real time, and also reactions from the governments concerned as well as other political figures.

Finally web users have created this search engine to help you find the cables released by Wikileaks quickly and easily according to their content.

ROBOT JOURNALISTS

Statsheet is a sports web site and the articles are written by robots. The software uses a multitude of all sorts of statistics, on American football or basketball and a data base of predefined phrases to generate match reports from lower league games that do not usually get any media coverage. This automated form of journalism could soon spread to the world of finance.

DRAW THE INTERNET

Draw the Internet, this is the challenge a British advertising agency set marketing professionals. A class of 9 years olds in a London school was set the same task. The aim is to compare the two visions of the web, one from adults who use it for work on a daily basis and the other from children who have grown up with social networks.

VIDEO OF THE DAY

How could you make university more appealing? Well, you could quite simply install giant slides to get from one floor to another. This original idea was developed by the math’s department of Munich University in Germany and the concept appears to be a huge hit with students.