headlessknight:

aiffe:

Petition to stop CISPA.

Oh look, a petition post that explains rationally what the petition is about without vilifying everyone who doesn’t immediately sign. I didn’t think those existed.

(Reblogged from truth-has-a-liberal-bias)
anarcho-queer: The Pirate Bay Moves to North Korea, Gets Virtual Asylum The Pirate Bay says it has been offered virtual asylum in North Korea. The move comes after the Norwegian Pirate Party was forced to stop routing traffic for the infamous BitTorrent site by a local copyright group. “We can reveal that we have been invited by the leader of the Republic of Korea, to fight our battles from their network,” the Pirate Bay says. A traceroute does indeed show that The Pirate Bay is now being routed through the dictatorial country. Last week the Swedish Pirate Party was forced to shut down its routing services to The Pirate Bay. The Party and its leaders took the difficult decision after they were threatened with a lawsuit by a local anti-piracy group. Luckily for The Pirate Bay, the pirate parties of Norway and Catalunya were willing to take over the role. However, after just a few days the Norwegians had to shut down their Pirate Bay node as well, facing similar threats to their Swedish comrades. This resulted in some downtime earlier today after which The Pirate Bay returned online from a rather unexpected location. A Pirate Bay insider informs TorrentFreak that they had been working for a while to get connectivity in North Korea. Today they made the big switch. “We’ve been in talks with them for about two weeks, since they opened access for foreigners to use 3G in the country,” a Pirate Bay insider told us. “TPB has been invited just like Eric Schmidt and Dennis Rodman. We’ve declined up until now.” While The Pirate Bay crew may not visit North Korea, they are using the country’s network to connect the BitTorrent site to the rest of the world. “This is truly an ironic situation. We have been fighting for a free world, and our opponents are mostly huge corporations from the United States of America, a place where freedom and freedom of speech is said to be held high.” “At the same time, companies from that country are chasing a competitor from other countries, bribing police and lawmakers, threatening political parties and physically hunting people from our crew. And to our help comes a government famous in our part of the world for locking people up for their thoughts and forbidding access to information,” they add. The Pirate Bay says that it sees the current step as one forward for North Korea, and the BitTorrent site hopes that all North Koreans can soon access the site to foster freedom of information. “We believe that being offered our virtual asylum in Korea is a first step of this country’s changing view of access to information. It’s a country opening up and one thing is sure, they do not care about threats like others do. In that way, TPB and Korea might have a special bond.” “We will do our best to influence the Korean leaders to also let their own population use our service, and to make sure that we can help improve the situation in any way we can. When someone is reaching out to make things better, it’s also ones duty to grab their hand,” TPB concludes. While it’s hard to believe everything The Pirate Bay says, the site does indeed route through North Korea at the moment. For some reason we think that Hollywood and the major music labels will have a hard time shutting that node down. This doesn’t feel right.

anarcho-queer:

The Pirate Bay Moves to North Korea, Gets Virtual Asylum

The Pirate Bay says it has been offered virtual asylum in North Korea. The move comes after the Norwegian Pirate Party was forced to stop routing traffic for the infamous BitTorrent site by a local copyright group. “We can reveal that we have been invited by the leader of the Republic of Korea, to fight our battles from their network,” the Pirate Bay says. A traceroute does indeed show that The Pirate Bay is now being routed through the dictatorial country.

Last week the Swedish Pirate Party was forced to shut down its routing services to The Pirate Bay.

The Party and its leaders took the difficult decision after they were threatened with a lawsuit by a local anti-piracy group.

Luckily for The Pirate Bay, the pirate parties of Norway and Catalunya were willing to take over the role. However, after just a few days the Norwegians had to shut down their Pirate Bay node as well, facing similar threats to their Swedish comrades.

This resulted in some downtime earlier today after which The Pirate Bay returned online from a rather unexpected location.

A Pirate Bay insider informs TorrentFreak that they had been working for a while to get connectivity in North Korea. Today they made the big switch.

“We’ve been in talks with them for about two weeks, since they opened access for foreigners to use 3G in the country,” a Pirate Bay insider told us. “TPB has been invited just like Eric Schmidt and Dennis Rodman. We’ve declined up until now.”

While The Pirate Bay crew may not visit North Korea, they are using the country’s network to connect the BitTorrent site to the rest of the world.

“This is truly an ironic situation. We have been fighting for a free world, and our opponents are mostly huge corporations from the United States of America, a place where freedom and freedom of speech is said to be held high.”

“At the same time, companies from that country are chasing a competitor from other countries, bribing police and lawmakers, threatening political parties and physically hunting people from our crew. And to our help comes a government famous in our part of the world for locking people up for their thoughts and forbidding access to information,” they add.

The Pirate Bay says that it sees the current step as one forward for North Korea, and the BitTorrent site hopes that all North Koreans can soon access the site to foster freedom of information.

“We believe that being offered our virtual asylum in Korea is a first step of this country’s changing view of access to information. It’s a country opening up and one thing is sure, they do not care about threats like others do. In that way, TPB and Korea might have a special bond.”

“We will do our best to influence the Korean leaders to also let their own population use our service, and to make sure that we can help improve the situation in any way we can. When someone is reaching out to make things better, it’s also ones duty to grab their hand,” TPB concludes.

While it’s hard to believe everything The Pirate Bay says, the site does indeed route through North Korea at the moment. For some reason we think that Hollywood and the major music labels will have a hard time shutting that node down.

This doesn’t feel right.

(Reblogged from realworldnews)

Spit Acid All Day: Copyright Alert System (CAS) passed

snowl4e:

Slow clap.

Slow clap.

Enjoy having your Internet slowed down for alledged copyright infringement.

Also CISPA is trying to come back as we speak.

‘Murika, you let CAS pass. If you don’t stop CISPA, say goodbye to Free Internet.

Here’s a link to the Stop CISPA petition.

I WILL REBLOG THIS EVERY MOTHER FUCKING DAY UNTIL THE 15TH.

15 days. 82 246 signatures needed. Only 411 were made yesterday.

even if you didn’t, fucking put your goddamn signature there (assuming you’re an american and actually can do that) and signal boost it.


14 days, 82 037 signatures needed. Only 209 were made yesterday.

Here’s some info on what will happen to you if you don’t fucking sign this petition.

  1. Your private information from sites, such as Facebook and Google, will be now available to the Goverment. And there’s jack shit you will be able to do about it. If someone doesn’t like you, they can go and check all the information Facebook and Google have about you
  2. Your military will ALSO have access to said private info.
  3. No warrants or subpoenas (also known as the “there’s jack shit you will be able to do about it” part)
  4. Companies that join this shit become immune to criminal and civil liability (also “an aka the “there’s jack shit you will be able to do about it” part”)

If you don’t get how serious that is, watch this video, it’ll demonstrate.

Oh, and GO SIGN THE FUCKING PETITION.

14 days, 81,888 signatures needed. Only 149 were made yesterday.

Don’t make me start reposting this post twice a day. Because I will if  the amount of signatures won’t fucking skyrocket.

(Reblogged from biblicalbelief)

lospaziobianco:

Street Art

(Reblogged from anarcho-queer)
“
We are by now so thoroughly adjusted to the ‘Now…this’ world of news - a world of fragments, where events stand alone, stripped of any connection to the past, or to the future, or to other events - that all assumptions of coherence have vanished. and so, perforce, has contradiction. In the context of no context, so to speak, it simply disappears. And in its absence, what possible interest could there be in a list of what the President says now and what he said then? It is merely a rehash of old news, and there is nothing interesting or entertaining in that. The only thing to be amused about is the bafflement of reporters at the public’s indifference. There is an irony in the fact that the very group that has taken the world apart should, on trying to piece it together again, be surprised that no on notices much, or cares.
Neil Postman (via anarchyandacupofcoffee)
(Reblogged from anarchyandacupofcoffee)
“
What afflicted the people in Brave New World was not that they were laughing instead of thinking, but that they did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking.
(via anarchyandacupofcoffee)
(Reblogged from anarchyandacupofcoffee)
“
For me, queer theory is the emblematic example of how we say the value of what queer politics brings is a challenge to what is the normal. And it’s of course what that whole angst is about “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and marriage equality. On the one hand, those are basic citizenship rights, right? You always know that there’s some second-class citizenship going on in military policy and marriage policy, right? If you’re looking for second-class citizenship, look in those things and you’ll often find it. So it’s a very reasonable set of political strategies, but the problem is also a very normative set of political strategies, right? It’s not about, “We have a right to be queer and create different kinds of communities and different definitions of family.” It’s about, “Look how much just like you we can be; look how respectable we can be, see; we can have our families look just like your families, and we can serve in the military just like you; and so look how straight we can be!” Rather than, “Look how queer we can be and look at how valuable it is to take queerness and open up the very definition of what constitutes respectable and normal.
Melissa Harris-Perry (via anarcho-queer)

(Source: teacakes)

(Reblogged from anarcho-queer)

cjchivers:

For Syria’s Antigovernment Fighters, A Saudi Purchase of Croatian Arms.

For weeks we had been watching the spread through the civil war in Syria of weapons made in the former Yugoslavia, and been admiring the work of Eliot Higgins (a.ka. Brown Moses) as he tried mapping their appearances in the videos of varied and far-flung armed groups. At one point, two weeks back, the NYT had assigned and accepted an At War blog post from Eliot and considered putting it on the NYT site.

Then we held up. By that time we were almost certain we knew who was buying and shipping in the weapons. We decided to try to show not just the terminal end of the arms pipeline, as others were working on that, and Eliot had already done the heavy lifting there. We decided to bear down on the other side — from where the weapons were coming, and to develop a richer sense of who was paying for and moving them. That took time. The results are in today’s NYT — a sketch of a more activist approach to helping the rebels, as Sunni Arab states funnel old Balkan stockpile into Syria, under Washington’s (at a minimum) watchful eye.  A backgrounder by Eliot as he describes this latest bout of arm-spotting (and the methodology and meaning in the appearance of unusual arms) is here.

Thank you, Eliot, for your patience, and your fine eye, and for creating an opportunity for merging new and old forms of reporting into a fresh look at recent events in what is becoming a more active regional war. 

One note:  An interesting question to pursue in the months and years ahead will be the future whereabouts and uses of the Croatian-sourced arms. Many arming programs start with good intentions, and later look naive, or even foolish. Why? Because weapons tend to move liquidly with time. These newly arrived weapons in Syria may well have been intended for nationalist and secular fighters. The briefings in Washington may have strongly emphasized that point. If history is a guide — and it is — then with time you can expect them to spread to others’ hands. For future researchers, three words: follow the guns.

ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHS

Screen grabs from rebel videos of the type of weapon that gave the deal away.

(Reblogged from nickturse)

voicesofmiddleearth:

apparently imperialism and murder is cool so long as its only innocent civilians reduced to an impersonal gray blob of The Other getting blown to bits with computers rather than ‘our people’ getting blown to bits by putting themselves in harm’s way in order to facilitate the bits blowing of The Other

because the only people of color that white liberals can bother pretending to concern themselves with are the fellow citizens they’re so used to patronizing and condescending to already

(Reblogged from joshisonlinesometimes)

anarcho-queer:

Israel Demolishes Homes of 4 Palestinian Families In East Jerusalem Leaving 33 Homeless

Jerusalem city authorities have demolished a building in east Jerusalem housing four families, leaving 33 Palestinian residents homeless.

The municipality said the building was built without proper permits and its structure was not sound.

Palestinian residents complain that it is nearly impossible to receive construction permits. The 33-member family displaced Tuesday said it was waiting to receive a permit.

Jerusalem city councilor Meir Margalit, a critic of the demolitions, said he has seen a small increase in recent months.

(Reblogged from anarcho-queer)