Category Archives: Politics

TWAt: bloggers as enemies

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Say hello to Josh Wolf, the second American I know of to be jailed for blog content (the first was a hapless Middle-American who blithely snapped a photo of the hotel in which Cheney was staying, several years ago. He has since been sprung). Let’s go to the ever-reliable BoingBoing for the report:

Earlier this month, San Francisco-based blogger Josh Wolf was jailed for refusing to hand over video to the federal government. He shot the footage at a 2005 G8 protest in San Francisco.

Details about the video, why authorities wanted it, and why Wolf declined, are here. The incident is the first I know of in which a blogger has been jailed for not relinquishing content on demand.

Violet Blue writes,

There are two benefits coming up; one is this Saturday the 19th at Cafe La Boheme and another is Thursday the 24th at House of Shields — and if you can’t make it to either, donate to his legal fund. Our local politicians are fumbling around with little more than two hands and a flashlight trying to figure out what to do, and SFMike is all over it in his deatiled Civic Center post about the supes trying to pass *something* more than gas in Josh Wolf Rules (Kimo Crossman points us to video of this session here). Interesting to note that the SFPD didn’t bother to show up for the hearing, isn’t it? In case it wasn’t obvious, Josh is still in jail for refusing to hand over the video he shot — but he’s not silent, as pal Jackson West is exchanging letters (analog email) with Josh and transcribing Josh‘s mail into blog posts over at The Revolution Will Be Televised. There’s a wiki, too. Josh would love to get mail, so if you still remember what a pen is, drop him a line at:

Federal Correctional Institution – Dublin
Joshua Wolf 98005-111
5701 8th St. Camp-Parks, Unit J2
Dublin, CA 94568

Link. Photo of Josh Wolf by punkmonksf.

Previously on BoingBoing:

Videoblogger’s protest footage demanded by FBI

Blogger jailed for refusing to hand over video

Operation Global Media Domination: The Technorati Treatment

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TIABrutal. Brutal.

For the first time in this young blog’s life, it’s been demoted, and that immediately after adding a snazzy “add to Technorati favorites” button in the sidebar.

Is this gratitude? I ASK YOU?!?!?

Breathe, raincoaster, breathe. Find the still centre. And strike from there with your whole being.

So, yesterday it seems there were 50.5 million blogs in the world, and mine was 49,000 and change. Today there are 52 million blogs and mine is Rank: 50,075 (182 links from 51 blogs) . And it’s forgotten all about the links from Liberty Forum and Nastyfuckingporn.com, as if they never existed, as if they never mattered.

NOT THAT I’M FUCKING BITTER!!!!!!

!

Oh, Perish the thought! I wonder how long it’ll take me to hunt down and exterminate 1.5 million bloggers?

Harcourt Fenton Mudd, a man after my own heart...and whatever it'll fetch on the open market

line o’ the day: BoingBoing on TWAT

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from guess where:

The terrorists hate our freedom, so by eliminating the freedom, we can stop the terrorists from hating us.

The whole post:

RyanAir, the discount airline that’s threatened to RyanAir nekkids!sue the UK government over new security procedures has posted this provocative image to its website: a crowd of naked people running away from their piled-up clothes, with the caption “New Airport Security Procedures Put the Fun Back Into Flying.”

They’re onto something here. If the existence of a plot to use implausible liquid explosives against aircraft creates a global war on moisture at the airports, imagine what a similar plot to smuggle a bomb up a terrorist’s ass would engender. The war on moisture is bad, but it’s nothing compared to the inevitable war on body cavities.

The terrorists hate our freedom, so by eliminating the freedom, we can stop the terrorists from hating us. Link (Thanks, Michael!)

Update: Eileen sez, ” Looks like the outtake from a Spencer Tunick photo shoot.”

Sure, this is a publicity stunt by RyanAir, but I can think of worse targets. If safety were really an issue, I’d be the last person to have a problem with this. I’m always the one rolling my eyes at the brain-dead whiners who complain about de-icing. But the ridiculous TWAT measures are nothing more than a sophisticated way in training us to take crap from people in uniform, believing all the while that it’s for our own protection.

It’s not. It’s for theirs.

comment o’ the day: complacency as complicity

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Slightly edited and stolen from Guido‘s blog, but I can do that because I’m the one that put it there. Besides, information wants to be free, right?

War

Someone asked if I thought Blair and Bush declared war on Iraq just for fun.

I don’t think they have wars for fun; I think they have wars to “secure their place in history” to outdo their fathers, and to gain or retain political power. Far more Americans and Brits have died as a result of their wars than died as a result of the terrorist attacks, and the effect of the tightening noose of fascism on the formerly free peoples of the US and the UK is a horrible thing to see.

It’s a kind of autoerotic asphyxiation. It is obscene.

They could never have done it without us. I never thought I’d witness it, but the easy acquiescence of the people to these controls is an offense to the eyes and the soul of every free-born human being. Britain is where representative democracy in its modern form originated, and America was forged in the belief that only the people who lived in a country had the right to decide how that country should be ruled.

What happened to that?

The government and popular actions of the past several years are nothing more than the grotesque spectacle of a citizenry falling on their knees to their rulers. Isn’t this the battle against tyranny we thought we’d won centuries ago?

If we give up our freedoms to preserve our pathetic skins, what exactly gives us our moral authority? When they say they’re bringing “Western-style democracy and freedoms” what can they possibly mean by that? The kind we’ve just forfeited?

As Benjamin Franklin said, those who would trade personal liberty for bodily safety deserve neither.

how not to lay off

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Gilt City Beggar 

Well you’d kinda think it went without saying that when you fire people, you shouldn’t lead them to believe you’ve just consigned them to a life of dumpster-diving and peeing on shredded newsprint.

Even if you have.

But apparently Northwest Airlines is as clueless when it comes to layoff PR as United is at that whole bigotry thang. The Smoking Gun reports on the handy-dandy pamphlet NWA handed its outgoing workers, to enable them to make the transition from productive worker to presumably Thunderbird-soused binners as smoothly as possible:

In a remarkable bit of corporate insensitivity, Northwest Airlines brass gave workers it is laying off a booklet offering “101 Ways To Save Money,” including “don’t be shy about pulling something you like out of the trash” and “ask your doctor for samples of prescriptions.” The booklet was included in a layoff packet recently given to dozens of pink-slipped workers in North Dakota, Montana, and Texas…

Along with the dumpster diving suggestion, Northwest recommended shorter showers, thrift store shopping, and getting “hand-me-down clothes and toys for your kids from friends and relatives.” Not to mention “grow your own vegetables and herbs” and “use old newspapers for cat litter.”

The whole document is on TSG‘s website here. Hey, what are you gonna do when Family Circle isn’t around to cover this lifestyle tip stuff anymore?

Praying Beggar