"anonymous"

Anonymous (used as a mass noun) is a term used in two senses. As an Internet meme it represents the concept of many online community users, or the online community itself, acting anonymously in a coordinated manner, usually toward a loosely self-agreed goal. It is also a label adopted by specific loose groups of people who undertake protests and other actions under the title "Anonymous," which derives from the same meme. It is generally considered to be a blanket term for members of certain Internet subcultures.

Actions credited to "Anonymous" are undertaken by unidentified individuals who apply the Anonymous label to themselves as attribution. After a series of controversial, widely-publicized protests and reprisal DDoS attacks by Anonymous in 2008, incidents linked to its cadre members are said to be increasingly common.

Although not necessarily tied to a single online entity, many websites are strongly associated with Anonymous. This includes notable imageboards such as 4chan and Futaba, their associated wikis, Encyclopædia Dramatica, and a number of forums.

Anonymous broadly represents the concept of any and all people as an unnamed collective. Definitions tend to emphasize the fact that the term cannot be readily encompassed by a simple definition, and instead it is often defined by aphorisms describing perceived qualities.

"Anonymous is the first internet-based superconsciousness. Anonymous is a group, in the sense that a flock of birds is a group. How do you know they're a group? Because they're travelling in the same direction. At any given moment, more birds could join, leave, peel off in another direction entirely."

—Landers, Chris, Baltimore City Paper, April 2, 2008.

In late 2010, the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks came under intense pressure to stop publishing secret United States diplomatic cables. In response, Anonymous announced its support for WikiLeaks. Operation Payback changed its focus to support WikiLeaks and launched DDoS attacks against PayPal, MasterCard, Visa and the Swiss bank PostFinance, in retaliation for perceived anti-WikiLeaks behavior under the codename of Operation Avenge Assange. Due to the attacks, both MasterCard and Visa's websites were brought down on December 8th. A threat researcher at PandaLabs said Anonymous also launched an attack which brought down the Swedish prosecutor's website when WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested in London and refused bail in relation to extradition to Sweden. (read more) (video clip)

One planet - one people

The theme for Human Rights Day 10 December 2010 is human rights defenders who act to end discrimination.

Human rights defenders acting against discrimination, often at great personal risk to both themselves and their families, are being recognized and acclaimed on this day.

Human rights defenders speak out against abuse and violations including discrimination, exclusion, oppression and violence. They advocate justice and seek to protect the victims of human rights violations. They demand accountability for perpetrators and transparency in government action. In so doing, they are often putting at risk their own safety, and that of their families.

Some human rights defenders are famous, but most are not. They are active in every part of the world, working alone and in groups, in local communities, in national politics and internationally.

Human Rights Day 2010 will highlight and promote the achievements of human rights defenders and it will again emphasize the primary responsibility Governments have to enable and protect their role. The Day is also intended to inspire a new generation of defenders to speak up and take action to end discrimination in all of its forms whenever and wherever it is manifested.

The story does not end after 10 December 2010. The focus on the work of human rights defenders will continue through all of 2011. (read more)

hero or villain ?

Julian Paul Assange (born 3 July 1971) is an Australian journalist, publisher and Internet activist. He is best known as the spokesperson and editor in chief for WikiLeaks, a whistleblower website. Before working with the website, he was a physics and mathematics student as well as a computer programmer. He has lived in several countries and has told reporters he is constantly on the move. He makes irregular public appearances to speak about freedom of the press, censorship, and investigative reporting; he has also won three journalism awards for his work with WikiLeaks.

Assange founded the controversial WikiLeaks website in 2006 and serves on its advisory board. In this capacity, he has been involved in the publication of material documenting extrajudicial killings in Kenya, a report of toxic waste dumping on the African coast, Church of Scientology manuals, Guantanamo Bay procedures, and material involving large banks such as Kaupthing and Julius Baer among other documents. He has recently received widespread public attention for the publication of classified material from WikiLeaks documenting details about the involvement of the United States in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. On 28 November 2010, WikiLeaks and its five media partners began publishing the United States diplomatic cables leak. According to The Guardian, this has placed Assange "at the centre of intense media speculation and a hate campaign against him in America".

On 30 November 2010, Interpol placed Assange on its red notice list of wanted persons; concomitantly, a European Arrest Warrant was issued for him. He is wanted for questioning on suspicion of "sex crimes"; it is reported that while having consensual sex his condom broke and he either did not disclose the breakage to his partner or continued after his partner asked him to stop. He has not been formally charged with any crime. (read more)

my eyes

I wish my eyes weren't opened

because now that they are

I will have to do something

about the evil I see in the world

dream big dreams

Dream lofty dreams...

and as you dream...

so shall you become.

...James Allen...

Hair Peace - Bed Peace

Fight for peace with

non-violent

non-participation

non-cooperation and

give peace a chancehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkZC7sqImaM

noble

This years Nobel Peace Prize winner is Liu Xiaobo,
he is currently sitting in a Chinese prison.

Freedom of Speech in China

Among the many people campaigning for human rights in China, Liu Xiaobo, the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, has become the most visible symbol of the struggle. A long-term exponent of non-violent protest, he is currently serving an 11-year prison term. (read more)

Liu Xiaobo; born 28 December 1955, is a Chinese intellectual, writer, and human rights activist and a political prisoner in China.

He has served as President of the Independent Chinese PEN Center since 2003. On 8 December 2008, Liu was detained in response to his participation with Charter 08. He was formally arrested on 23 June 2009, on suspicion of "inciting subversion of state power." He was tried on the same charges on 23 December 2009, and sentenced to eleven years' imprisonment and two years' deprivation of political rights on 25 December 2009.

During his 4th prison term from 2009 to 2020, he won the Nobel Peace Prize on 8 October 2010, for "his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China." (read more)

Failure

The greatest failure is the failure of the imagination; the inability to think that things can be other than they are; the lack of openness to the deeper layers of the human psyche; the unquestioning of all too popular assumptions; the ready acceptance of the lies that all vested interests in society tell and the deadening and depressing thought that nothing will ever change.

The Wave, 1971 by the sculptor Sinisca, Vatican Museum.

Many years ago I heard one of our Irish Senators say that the reason there was so much bloodshed on the streets of the North of Ireland (happily now a nightmare from the past and long gone!)could be directly attributed to a singular lack of imagination. How accurate this politician was - Senator David Norris - veritably goes without saying. When imagination fails, or is not even tried in the first place, then all mediation and dialogue which are the essence of diplomacy are committed to the dunghill of failure. Conflict at all levels - familial, national and international - is the result of the brekdown in our ability to imagine that things can be different, that dreams of peace and harmony are possible, that they are not just pipe dreams or pie in the sky.

What is greatly needed today on all levels of society - in local communities, in cities, in towns, in clubs and indeed in countries and in international affairs are statesmen and stateswomen with imagination, people with dreams and visions that are realizable, practicable, and feasible. But, I suppose, all real change starts at the bottom, in local communities, in our very own families, where we encourage each other to follow our dreams; where we encourage each other that we can make a difference here and now where we are, that as the Bard of Avon once said, that "we are the stuff that dreams are made on," that humankind can redeem itself as well as wreaking sheer havoc, if not possible extinction, upon itself if only it has the courage to dream that things can be different.

I'll finish this wee post with one of my favourite quotations:

Some people see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.  Robert Kennedy on his brother JFK; original quote from G.B.Shaw.

War Of Desire

el blog del narco

The Audacity Of Hope

The title of The Audacity of Hope was
derived from a sermon delivered by
Obama's former pastor, Jeremiah Wright.

Wright had attended a lecture by
Dr. Frederick G. Sampson in Richmond,
Virginia, in the late 1980s, on the
G.F. Watts painting Hope, which
inspired him to give a sermon in 1990
based on the subject of the painting.

"With her clothes in rags, her body
scarred and bruised and bleeding,
her harp all but destroyed and with
only one string left, she had the
audacity to make music and praise God ...
To take the one string you have left
and to have the audacity to hope ...
that's the real word God will have us hear
from this passage and from Watt's painting."

George Carlin - Who Owns You?

Independence Day

You think you have freedom?...

You think you have a democracy?...

You think our government works for us?...

You are a slave...a prisoner of war.

Global corporate fascism is complete...

the new millennium of slavery is here.

It's "Independence Day"...are you "free"?


(from the dictionary)
independence: the quality or
state of being independent :
FREEDOM

independent 1: SELF-GOVERNING;
also : not affiliated with a
larger controlling unit 2: not
requiring or relying on something
else or somebody else 3: not
easily influenced : showing self
reliance and personal freedom
4: not commited to a political
party


What are we fighting for?...are we fighting

for freedom or are we fighting for corporate acquisition?

It's time for a revolution...a revolution for independence.

I advocate for the non-violent removal of all government

and military leaders and the elimination of all corporate

influence in the control of our world affairs...

...it's time for a real "Independence Day" !!!

We can do better...it's time to change the world.

Civilian Conservation Corps

"I propose to create a civilian conservation corps to be used in simple work, not interfering with normal employment, and confining itself to forestry, the prevention of soil erosion, flood control and similar projects. I call your attention to the fact that this type of work is of definite, practical value, not only through the prevention of great present financial loss, but also as a means of creating future national wealth"...Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a public work relief program for unemployed men age 18-24, providing unskilled manual labor related to the conservation and development of natural resources in rural areas of the United States from 1933 to 1942. As part of the New Deal legislation proposed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR), the CCC was designed to provide relief for unemployed youth who had a very hard time finding jobs during the Great Depression while implementing a general natural resource conservation program on public lands in every U.S. state, including the territories of Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The CCC became the most popular New Deal program among the general public, providing jobs for a total of 3 million young men from families on relief. Implicitly the CCC also led to awareness and appreciation of the outdoors and the nation's natural resources, especially for city youth. The CCC was never considered a permanent program and depended on emergency and temporary legislation for its existence. On June 30, 1942 Congress voted to eliminate funding for the CCC, formally ceasing active operation of the program.

During the time of the CCC, volunteers planted nearly 3 billion trees to help reforest America, constructed more than 800 parks nationwide that would become the start of most state parks, developed forest fire fighting methods and a network of thousands of miles of public roadways, and constructed buildings connecting the nation's public lands. (read more)

We should restore the CCC, it was a good thing.

Drill Baby Drill

One State Solution

I have a simple solution to the

Israeli-Palestinian Debacle...

take down all the walls and declare

the population there in as Israeli citizens.

Arab and Jew, Muslims, Christians, Druze, and Samaritans.


...but nobody ever listens to me...

Agent For Change

Coleen Rowley (born December 20, 1954) is a former FBI agent and whistleblower, and was a Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) candidate for Congress in Minnesota's 2nd congressional district, one of eight congressional districts in Minnesota in 2006.

Shortly after she became a Special Agent with the FBI, Rowley was assigned to the Omaha, Nebraska and Jackson, Mississippi Divisions. Beginning in 1984, she spent six years working in the New York Office on investigations involving organized crime. She also served in the U.S. embassy in Paris, and the consulate in Montreal. In 1990, she was assigned to the FBI's Minneapolis office where she became the chief legal adviser to the office.

After the September 11, 2001, attacks, Rowley wrote a paper for FBI Director Robert Mueller documenting how FBI HQ personnel in Washington, D.C., had mishandled and failed to take action on information provided by the Minneapolis, Minnesota Field Office regarding its investigation of suspected terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui. This individual had been suspected of being involved in preparations for a suicide-hijacking similar to the December 1994 "Eiffel Tower" hijacking of Air France 8969. Failures identified by Rowley may have left the U.S. vulnerable to the September 11, 2001, attacks. Rowley was one of many agents frustrated by the events that led up to the attacks, writing:

During the early aftermath of September 11th, when I happened to be recounting the pre-September 11th events concerning the Moussaoui investigation to other FBI personnel in other divisions or in FBIHQ, almost everyone's first question was "Why?--Why would an FBI agent(s) deliberately sabotage a case? (I know I shouldn't be flippant about this, but jokes were actually made that the key FBI HQ personnel had to be spies or moles, like [Robert Hanssen], who were actually working for Osama Bin Laden to have so undercut Minneapolis' effort.)

Rowley testified in front of the Senate and for the 9/11 Commission about the FBI's internal organization and mishandling of information related to the September 11, 2001, attacks. Mueller and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) pushed for and got a major reorganization, focused on creation of the new Office of Intelligence at the FBI. This reorganization was supported with a significant expansion of FBI personnel with counterterrorism and language skills.

Rowley retired from the FBI in 2004 after 24 years with the agency.

Rowley jointly held the TIME "Person of the Year" award in 2002 with two other women credited as whistleblowers: Sherron Watkins from Enron and Cynthia Cooper of WorldCom. She also received the Sam Adams Award for 2002. (read more)

Tiburcio Vasquez

Tiburcio Vasquez was allegedly the inspiration for Johnston McCulley's fictonal character "Zorro".

Tiburcio Vásquez (August 11, 1835–March 19, 1875) was a Californio bandit who was active in California from 1857 to 1874. The Vasquez Rocks, 40 miles north of Los Angeles, were one of his many hideouts and are named for him. He was probably the most notorious bandit California ever saw.

In January 1875 Vásquez was sentenced to hang for murder. His trial had taken four days and the jury deliberated for two hours before finally finding him guilty of two counts of murder in the Tres Pinos robbery.

Visitors flocked to Vásquez's jail cell, many of them women. He signed autographs and posed for photographs. Vásquez sold the photos from the window of his cell and used the money to pay for his legal defense. After his conviction, he appealed for clemency. It was denied by Governor Romualdo Pacheco. Vásquez calmly met his fate in San Jose on March 17, 1875. He was 39 years old.

He stated..."A spirit of hatred and revenge took possession of me. I had numerous fights in defense of what I believed to be my rights and those of my countrymen. I believed we were unjustly deprived of the social rights that belonged to us." (Dictated by Vásquez to explain his actions)

Vásquez was asked just before his execution, "Do you believe in an afterlife?" He replied, "I hope so... for then soon I shall see all my old sweethearts again". The only word he spoke on the gallows was..."pronto"...soon. (read more)

Take It To The Edge - Look Over - Don't Fall

"Conan the Destroyer"
Frank Frazetta


That which does not kill us

makes us stronger

My Victory Garden

Victory gardens, also called war gardens or food gardens for defense, were vegetable, fruit and herb gardens planted at private residences and public parks in United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Germany during World War I and World War II to reduce the pressure on the public food supply brought on by the war effort. In addition to indirectly aiding the war effort these gardens were also considered a civil "morale booster" — in that gardeners could feel empowered by their contribution of labor and rewarded by the produce grown. This made victory gardens become a part of daily life on the home front.

In March of 1917, Charles Lathrop Pack organized the National War Garden Commission and launched the war garden campaign. During World War I, food production had fallen dramatically, especially in Europe, where agricultural labor had been recruited into military service and remaining farms devastated by the conflict. Pack conceived the idea that the supply of food could be greatly increased without the use of land and manpower already engaged in agriculture, and without the significant use of transportation facilities needed for the war effort. The campaign promoted the cultivation of available private and public lands, resulting in over five million gardens and foodstuff production exceeding $1.2 billion by the end of the war.

It was emphasized to home front urbanites and suburbanites that the produce from their gardens would help to lower the price of vegetables needed by the US War Department to feed the troops, thus saving money that could be spent elsewhere on the military: "Our food is fighting," one US poster read; in Britain the slogan "Dig for Victory" was ubiquitous.

Although at first the Department of Agriculture objected to Eleanor Roosevelt's institution of a Victory Garden on the White House grounds, fearing that such a movement would hurt the food industry, basic information about gardening appeared in public services booklets distributed by the Department of Agriculture. The US Department of Agriculture estimates that more than 20 million victory gardens were planted. Fruit and vegetables harvested in these home and community plots was estimated to be 9-10 million tons, an amount equal to all commercial production of fresh vegetables.

Victory gardens were planted in backyards and on apartment-building rooftops, with the occasional vacant lot "commandeered for the war effort!" and put to use as a cornfield or a squash patch. During World War II, sections of lawn were publicly plowed for plots in Hyde Park, London to publicize the movement. In New York City, the lawns around vacant Riverside were devoted to victory gardens, as were portions of San Francisco's Golden Gate Park.

The Fenway Victory Gardens in the Back Bay Fens of Boston, Massachusetts and the Dowling Community Garden in Minneapolis, Minnesota, remain active as the last surviving public examples from World War II.

Since the turn of the century there has existed a growing interest in Victory Gardens. A grassroots campaign promoting such gardens has recently sprung up in the form of new Victory Gardens in public spaces, Victory Garden websites and blogs, as well as petitions to both renew a national campaign for the Victory Garden and to encourage the re-establishment of a Victory Garden on the White House lawn. In March 2009, First Lady Michelle Obama, planted an 1,100 square foot "Kitchen Garden" on the White House lawn, the first since Eleanor Roosevelt's, to raise awareness about healthy food which was one of Mrs. Obama's advocacy issues

10,000 Monkeys

The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare.

In this context, "almost surely" is a mathematical term with a precise meaning, and the "monkey" is not an actual monkey, but a metaphor for an abstract device that produces a random sequence of letters ad infinitum. The theorem illustrates the perils of reasoning about infinity by imagining a vast but finite number, and vice versa. The probability of a monkey exactly typing a complete work such as Shakespeare's Hamlet is so tiny that the chance of it occurring during a period of time of the order of the age of the universe is minuscule, but not zero. (read more)