US security consultants may have been conspiring in secret to bring WikiLeaks down, but Britain’s former intelligence chief links WikiLeaks with the downfall of oppressive regimes in the Middle East. And then there’s WikiLeak’s staunchest supporter, Anonymous, which caught said security consultants with their pants down (and may have even erased their CEO’s iPad).
Over the past month, new media scholars have spilled a lot of digital ink arguing whether the Internet actually fostered the 2011 revolution in Egypt, Tunisia, and other Middle East countries–or whether it simply created a dependency that governments can shut down to stymie protesters. Here’s a “Middle East Internet Scorecard” showing where and when governments have cut off their citizens’ access to the net.
How hard would it be for, say, President Beck to shut down Google, Facebook, and the like in the US of A? Read this Middle East censorship roundup to find out what Egyptians, Libyans, and the rest of us can do to safeguard access to a global electronic network.
High-tech engineering for those who want more privacy for their privates. Will Victoria’s Secret come out with a Kevlar-lined bra in time for the holidays?
http://idle.slashdot.org/story/10/11/23/150207/Underwear-Invention-Protects-Privacy-At-Airport
Thanks to Jeff Buske you don’t have to be embarrassed while going through the full body scanners at the airport. Buske has invented radiation shielding underwear for the shy traveler. From the article: “Jeff Buske says his invention uses a powdered metal that protects people’s privacy when undergoing medical or security screenings. Buske of Las Vegas, Nev.-Rocky Flats Gear says the underwear’s inserts are thin and conform to the body’s contours, making it difficult to hide anything beneath them. The mix of tungsten and other metals do not set off metal detectors.”
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Nov 072010
On our inner city permaculture farm we find heroin needles in between the broccoli plants. We have a barbed wire fence that wraps around the entire 2.5 acres of our “freeway food forest” — a food forest that is rising from the ruins of a freeway that collapsed and then lay dormant for 20 years. At night there is a pregnant cat that makes the place her own (all the sheet mulching has stirred up the mice and rats). Other folks crawl through the fence at night too. With perhaps one exception, the people that come at night aren’t the same people that come during the day. Often “fresh” needles appear in the morning. The stories we write about here all have to do with the chain link and barbed wire fence that was on site when we arrived. The forces it is meant to keep out, the forces it is meant to contain, the edge it creates around our site, the fact that it is there at all.
please join the chapter fourteen email list to read the rest of the post and the ensuing dialog. join the conversation!
/m
Oct 152010
Hello,
My name is Dennis St. Pierre, I am an MFA student in the Intermedia Program here at the University of Maine.
I am announcing a new light hearted, humorous and informative voice opposed to the Tea Party Movement. Everything is explained below in a press release I wrote.
We are still adding content on a daily basis to our site, especially the intelligence, (aren’t we all) and there are lot’s of products that are not in our online store yet.
Hopefully everything will be completed soon. None the less, it is time to announce.
So please visit our site, purchase goods in our effort to stand up to the Tea Baggers and fight for our country while at the same time raising money and awareness for important causes. Help us go viral and spread the call.
Any advice, feedback, links to great information and content you think would be appropriate to add to our site, would be greatly appreciated.
I hope life finds you all well. I wish you all great happiness.
Dennis St.Pierre
Hello Everyone,
I am Dennis St. Pierre, an ordinary worker, a student, an artist and most important a citizen! I am a Perturbed Passionate Patriotic Pacifist (say that 4 x fast) who is tired of the high jacking of our Democratic Republic by the Tea Party and feel it’s time to do something about it. So I and some Friends, have created the NOT TEA (yes naughty) Party. We have decided to fight back using humor, intelligence and common sense.
Like most of you, we have little time to go to meetings and assemblies, coffee party’s etc. We are so busy just staying afloat. But that doesn’t mean we have nothing to say and the time to speak up is passing us by.
By not voicing our opposition, by remaining silent and complacent, we are allowing a possible takeover of our government and ultimately our country. This is the work of the ultra wealthy and the extremely misinformed in the guise of “Patriots”, who call themselves the “Tea Party”.
It is through simple acts of defiance that we can defeat this opposition. We all know the power of marketing; we all know how powerful a few words can be. We all can defeat this rhetoric filled and misinformed group and take our country back.
How? We fight back without malice, but instead armed with humor, common sense and strong intelligence as our weapons, We take simple actions like that of wearing a T-shirt, placing a bumper sticker on our car, placing a sign on our lawn to be our voice when we don’t feel like direct confrontation. We take time to gain knowledge by reading and debate. Suddenly, you gain strength, armed with the knowledge of being one of many. Suddenly you feel strong enough to stand up and confront the bullies directly.
We believe as Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. believed that it is through many little acts of non violence and intelligent defiance that true power prevails. These acts include the use of Humor, Knowledge and Good Will.
That being said; we are attempting to give you the means to defeat this takeover. We have created a website www.notteacompany.com or www.notteaparty.com . It is being updated constantly with News, A Library, Links, Cartoons, Humorous Videos, a place to exchange knowledge, as well as a Mercantile where you can buy products to voice your displeasure of the Tea Party. Products with humorous double entendre rally cries! “I’m NOT TEA”, “Sooooo NOT TEA”, “NOT TEA & NICE”, “It’s Nice 2 B Naugh-Tea” and many others that support the “NOT TEA PARTY” idea. We will soon have “Wicked Not Tea Coffee” as well. 15% of all profits go to NON PROFITS.
So, I hope you will go to our website and our store and become part of a “Wicked Not Tea Party”. So laugh, be informed and perform acts of Good Will all while being NOT TEA!!!
Sincerely,
Dennis St. Pierre
The NOT TEA COMPANY
For more info please contact me via email at notteacompany@yahoo.com
“Remember…… try to be good and if that’s impossible, Be reeeaaalllly bad and tell me how good it was!!!! 
”
“Imagine” john lennon
Oct 132010
Hey all,
I’m writing from San Francisco, my home these days. San Francisco is at the forefront of an amazing urban gardening movement, and it is very exciting! I’ve been working very closely with one urban farm in particular, called Hayes Valley Farm. It’s a 2.3 acre food forest rising from a freeway that collapsed during the ’89 earthquake. I hold the title of Lead Researcher on the Biodiversity Team. Most recently for 350.org’s 10-10-10 global day of action to prevent climate change, we began an effort to research and steward what edible and medicinal plants do well in the multiple microclimates within the city. We gave away 150 permaculture kits to initiate healthy ecosystems in folks’ backyards, front yards, planter pots, or vertical wall gardens (we get creative in the city). Our ultimate question is “how many people can you feed on how little urban land?” I like to think it is possible to have sustainable cities, but I wonder too if they stay cities or become something new…. This teeters on an artistic and pedagogical piece I recently did for Mary Walling Blackburn’s Radical Citizenship: the Tutorials, called Root, City, Thorn.
Anyway, I’m also very involved in thinking about the human organizational models that encourage healthy ecosystems and healthy people. We are facing some very juicy challenges on the farm and are seeking answers from lots of different sources. To this end, and in the spirit of exchanging insight, I’ve just launched an email list called Chapter Fourteen. I hope all you UMaine alumns involved in permaculture and/or participatory models of communication will join this list and share what you’ve learned from your own communities, as well as stories about where you’re stuck.
Please join! http://lists.beforebefore.net/listinfo.cgi/chapter_fourteen-beforebefore.net Beginning on the new moon November 5th we’ll have roughly 2 week discussions around the topic a moderator initiates. Please let me know if you’re interested in facilitating a discussion, and I’ll sign you up!
Thanks Jon for getting NMDnet going!
xoxo
You gotta feel for corporate polluters like BP. First people stop buying their stuff. Now banks aren’t giving them loans. But not to worry: the Department of Homeland Security has them covered.
http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=4a789757de0e1bd810cb25cebc71312b via Byline Monsanto, the giant of agricultural biotechnology, has been buffeted by setbacks this year that have prompted analysts to question whether its winning streak is coming to an end.
Even banks are smelling a change in attitude:
http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=4bace2ca10b06640e129403b82716628 via Byline Some lenders are taking a stand on practices like mining and deforestation that may be risky to their reputations.
But don’t worry, Homeland Security to the rescue! (At least Nixon had the decency to keep his blacklists to himself.)
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/09/14/2254235/PAs-Dept-of-Homeland-Security-Shared-Oil-Shale-Protester-Info-With-Companies?from=rss via Byline Western Pennsylvania’s shale oil deposits have lately attracted interest not only from companies who have been extracting some of that oil, but from locals who object to what they perceive as sharp dealing by the companies involved, favorable treatment by the state government, and environmental degradation as a result of the extraction. Some of the most visible of those protesters, it turns out, have been tracked (including “Web traffic”) by Pennsylvania’s own Homeland Security department, and that information about them has been shared not only within the department, but with the oil companies themselves. Homeland Security director James Powers defended the information shared with the oil companies as part of a triweekly bulletin, saying “We want to continue providing this support to the Marcellus Shale Formation natural gas stakeholders while not feeding those groups fomenting dissent against those same companies.”
New in the “They Can Do That?” Department: Your Facebook friends can add you to groups without your approval, and the only way to make sure that never happens is to *have no friends*. Oh, and the FBI can bug your car without a warrant. While it’s in your driveway.
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/10/08/1358232/Lighthearted-Facebook-Friends-Could-Make-You-Join-NAMBLA-Group?from=rss via Byline mykos writes “The Facebook groups feature is causing bit of a stir with its users. TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington was allegedly added to a group about NAMBLA, and in turn, he added Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. It’s all in good (albeit tasteless) fun, except when a harmless joke goes awry and you find yourself being detained by customs when a friend decided to drag you into a mock terrorist group. Facebook representatives are aware of the matter, but are dismissive of it. A Facebook spokeswoman said, ‘If you have a friend that is adding you to Groups you do not want to belong to, or they are behaving in a way that bothers you, you can tell them to stop doing it, block them or remove them as a friend — and they will no longer EVER have the ability to add you to any Group.’ In somewhat related news, guillotines ensure you won’t have dandruff on your shoulders anymore.”
Did I mention the guy with his car bugged was a college student? The FBI was pretty keen to get it back, too.
http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/10/08/1413240/College-Student-Finds-GPS-On-Car-FBI-Retrieve?from=rss via Byline mngdih writes with this excerpt from Wired: “A California student got a visit from the FBI this week after he found a secret GPS tracking device on his car, and a friend posted photos of it online. The post prompted wide speculation about whether the device was real, whether the young Arab-American was being targeted in a terrorism investigation and what the authorities would do. It took just 48 hours to find out: The device was real, the student was being secretly tracked and the FBI wanted their expensive device back … His discovery comes in the wake of a recent ruling by the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals saying it’s legal for law enforcement to secretly place a tracking device on a suspect’s car without getting a warrant, even if the car is parked in a private driveway. … ‘We have all the information we needed,’ they told him. ‘You don’t need to call your lawyer. Don’t worry, you’re boring.’”
Given his McCarthy-esqe methods, it’s easy to dismiss Wertham as a power-hungry quack. Some of his observations about air rifles and knives being advertised alongside violent comics, however, suggest layers of influence that go beyond even what we expect from videogames Wertham would have freaked to see Grand Theft Auto, but might have been consoled by the rarity of in-game advertisements.
http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/08/30/1624221/Library-of-Congress-Opens-Records-of-Anti-Comic-Book-Shrink?from=rss via Byline eldavojohn writes “Some light is being shone on comic book history today as the Library of Congress opens up the 222 boxes of a German psychiatrist’s evidence and papers against comic books. Dr. Fredric Wertham is well known by comic book fans as the author of Seduction of the Innocent, a bestselling book linking comic books and juvenile delinquency — leading to a full blown congressional investigation (some say witch hunt) of the comic book industry. Wertham was long involved with criminal trials before campaigning against comic books and promoting industry and government censorship for children. Ars adds a little more context for the younger crowd and notes that he later tried to move against television violence but couldn’t find the publisher backing he had against comic books.”
#img1#This article from the New York Times discusses forensic photogrammetry, a way of analysing crime scenes with techniques familiar from 3D modelling. So if that job as a game animator falls through, there’s always CSI…
img1 caption=’Image from the New York Times’
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#img1#This article from the New York Times discusses forensic photogrammetry, a way of analysing crime scenes with techniques familiar from 3D modelling. So if that job as a game animator falls through, there’s always CSI…
img1 caption=’Image from the New York Times’
>
This article from the New York Times discusses forensic photogrammetry, a way of analysing crime scenes with techniques familiar from 3D modelling. So if that job as a game animator falls through, there’s always CSI…
Image from the New York Times
Dec 082009
I suppose it was only a matter of time before an industry of carpetbaggers would be knocking on the door of DIY political bloggers. Now, for the politician who wants his own blog so he can show he’s a “man of the people”: political themes for WordPress blogs (think stars-and-stripes banners and pictures of people shaking hands).
Ghostwriter not included. (via Craig Dietrich)
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“Police arrested a senior vice president from Island Def Jam Records, saying he hindered their crowd-control efforts by not cooperating. The crowd at a mall where Justin Bieber was appearing got out of control, and police wanted the man to send a tweet asking for calm; he refused and they arrested him on a felony assault charge ‘for putting people in danger.’”
http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/mGXH9PO__N8/Police- Arrest-Man-For-Refusing-To-Tweet