Colbert: Anonymous Crushes HBGary

Posted on October 21, 2011 by DrQuickbeam

You may remember a few months back when Aaron Barr, CEO of computer security firm HBGary, tried to finger some of the key members of hacker collective Anonymous and got burned. Colbert lays out the context for that little drama as being part of a coverup by Bank of America involving the Justice Department and Wikileaks while at the same time lampooning everyone like a ninja. Check out the video and see for yourself.

[UPDATE]

On a related note, members of Anonymous have just claimed responsibility for taking down more than 40 underground childpr0n websites and releasing over 1500 user names to the public. Is Anonymous branching out in their mission or its it just a few members deciding to take the Robin Hood act to the next level?

The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism by Hakim Bey

Posted on April 12, 2007 by DrQuickbeam

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The Poverty/Terror Myth

Posted on March 19, 2007 by DrQuickbeam

The idea that poverty breeds terror appears obvious; how could it be otherwise? And people as different as the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Bush, Jacques Chirac and Pakistan’s leader, Pervez Musharraf, have also noted a link between poverty and terrorism.

In fact, there is now robust evidence that there is no such link. That does not mean, however, that economics is irrelevant.

First, to the question of poverty. Of the 50 poorest countries in the world (see list at right) only Afghanistan (and perhaps Bangladesh and Yemen) has much experience in terrorism, global or domestic.

But surely that is the wrong way to look at things. Aren’t the people who commit terrorist acts poor, even if they are from countries that are not? No. Remember, most of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were middle-class sons of Saudi Arabia and many were well-educated. And Osama bin Laden himself is from one of the richest families in the Middle East.

But it goes deeper than that.

cnn

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Amazon Natives Use Google Earth, GPS To Protect Rainforest Home

Posted on November 17, 2006 by billycuts

Deep in the most remote jungles of South America, Amazon Indians (Amerindians) are using Google Earth, Global Positioning System (GPS) mapping, and other technologies to protect their fast-dwindling home. Tribes in Suriname, Brazil, and Colombia are combining their traditional knowledge of the rainforest with Western technology to conserve forests and maintain ties to their history and cultural traditions, which include profound knowledge of the forest ecosystem and medicinal plants. Helping them is the Amazon Conservation Team (ACT), a nonprofit organization working with indigenous people to conserve biodiversity, health, and culture in South American rainforests.

MongaBay.Com

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George W. Bush is a Tool

Posted on April 25, 2006 by billycuts

A poll comes out showing that the people are pissed about gas prices and that this anger is affecting the approval rating of the president:

A Washington Post / ABC News poll says 70 percent of Americans say higher gas prices are causing them financial hardship. And most are blaming President Bush, with 74 percent disapproving of how he is handling the issue.

As usual, Bush decides to play politics and lower gas prices. All well and good, until you realize how he’s doing it:

President Bush is temporarily suspending environmental rules on gasoline and deferring purchases for the nation’s strategic reserves in hopes of driving down rising gasoline prices.

Of course! Call for alternative fuels in your State of the Union Address, then instead of pouring money into those types of iniatives, let’s just screw over the environment a bit more. But it gets even better.

President Bush says the Justice Department is working with states’ Attorneys General to investigate allegations of price gouging at the pump.

Of course, gas is so expensive because of gas stations gouging the price. Not because of the artificial manipulation of the market by gas companies. Whatever. Luckily, folks in Illinois and California are pushing for Bush’s impeachment

State Rep. Karen Yarbrough (D-Maywood) has sponsored a resolution calling on the General Assembly to submit charges to the U.S. House so its lawmakers could begin impeachment proceedings.

It would be the first state legislature to pass such a resolution, though the measure faces a dim future in a Republican-controlled Congress.

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Beverage Creates a Buzz

Posted on April 14, 2006 by billycuts

INZA, Colombia — Call it the “Real Thing.”

Indians in this remote mountain village in southern Colombia are marketing a particularly refreshing soft drink that harks back to Coca-Cola’s original formula, when “coca” was in the name for a reason.

Advertising posters here describe the carbonated, citrus-flavored Coca-Sek as “more than an energizer” — a buzz that just might be provided by a key ingredient, a syrup produced by boiling coca leaves.

Since January, the Nasa indigenous community has been offering the soft drink locally and in neighboring Popayan, where it is bottled. By the end of the year, the Nasa hope to sell Coca-Sek nationwide, targeting the same consumers who drink Gatorade or Red Bull, both highly popular with Colombians.

For six years, the Nasa have been quietly selling coca-flavored cookies, aromatic teas, wines and ointments at informal sidewalk stalls and in health food stores. They say they’re trying to capitalize on a plentiful resource — and remove the stigma from a leaf that for them is sacred.

LA Times

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Dada Manifesto by Tristan Tzara, 23rd March 1918

Posted on March 29, 2006 by DrQuickbeam

The magic of a word – DADA – which for journalists has opened the door to an unforeseen world, has for us not the slightest importance.

To launch a manifesto you have to want: A.B. & C., and fulminate against 1, 2, & 3, work yourself up and sharpen you wings to conquer and circulate lower and upper case As, Bs & Cs, sign, shout, swear, organise prose into a form that is absolutely and irrefutably obvious, prove its ne plus ultra and maintain that novelty resembles life in the same way as the latest apparition of a harlot proves the essence of God. His existence had already been proved by the accordion, the landscape and soft words. * To impose one’s A.B.C. is only natural – and therefore regrettable. Everyone does it in the form of a crystalbluff-madonna, or a monetary system, or pharmaceutical preparations, a naked leg being the invitation to an ardent and sterile Spring. The love of novelty is a pleasant sort of cross, it’s evidence of a naive don’t-give-a-damn attitude, a passing, positive, sign without rhyme or reason. But this need is out of date, too. By giving art the impetus of supreme simplicity – novelty – we are being human and true in relation to innocent pleasures; impulsive and vibrant in order to crucify boredom. At the lighted crossroads, alert, attentive, lying in wait for years, in the forest. * I am writing a manifesto and there’s nothing I want, and yet I’m saying certain things, and in principle I am against manifestos, as I am against principles (quantifying measures of the moral value of every phrase – too easy; approximation was invested by the impressionists). *

I’m writing this manifesto to show that you can perform contrary actions at the same time, in one single, fresh breath; I am against action; as for continual contradiction, and affirmation too, I am neither for nor against them, and I won’t explain myself because I hate common sense.

Grey Lodge

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The Click That Broke a Government’s Grip

Posted on February 21, 2006 by DrQuickbeam

The top editors of the China Youth Daily were meeting in a conference room last August when their cell phones started buzzing quietly with text messages. One after another, they discreetly read the notes. Then they traded nervous glances.

Colleagues were informing them that a senior editor in the room, Li Datong, had done something astonishing. Just before the meeting, Li had posted a blistering letter on the newspaper’s computer system attacking the Communist Party’s propaganda czars and a plan by the editor in chief to dock reporters’ pay if their stories upset party officials

No one told the editor in chief. For 90 minutes, he ran the meeting, oblivious to the political storm that was brewing. Then Li announced what he had done.

The chief editor stammered and rushed back to his office, witnesses recalled. But by then, Li’s memo had leaked and was spreading across the Internet in countless e-mails and instant messages. Copies were posted on China’s most popular Web forums, and within hours people across the country were sending Li messages of support.

The government’s Internet censors scrambled, ordering one Web site after another to delete the letter. But two days later, in an embarrassing retreat, the party bowed to public outrage and scrapped the editor in chief’s plan to muzzle his reporters.

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The Latest in “emotion recognition”

Posted on December 15, 2005 by DrQuickbeam

The mysterious half-smile that has intrigued viewers of the Mona Lisa for centuries isn’t really that difficult to interpret, Dutch researchers said Thursday.

She was smiling because she was happy – 83 percent happy, to be exact, according to scientists from the University of Amsterdam.

In what they viewed as a fun demonstration of technology rather than a serious experiment, the researchers scanned a reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece and subjected it to cutting-edge “emotion recognition” software, developed in collaboration with the University of Illinois.

The result showed the painting’s famous subject was 83 percent happy, 9 percent disgusted, 6 percent fearful and 2 percent angry. She was less than 1 percent neutral, and not at all surprised.

RedOrbit

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Secret Code in Color Printers Lets Government Track You

Posted on October 19, 2005 by horatioalgernon

San Francisco – A research team led by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recently broke the code behind tiny tracking dots that some color laser printers secretly hide in every document.

The U.S. Secret Service admitted that the tracking information is part of a deal struck with selected color laser printer manufacturers, ostensibly to identify counterfeiters. However, the nature of the private information encoded in each document was not previously known.

Electronic Frontier Foundation

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Videos Challenge Accounts of Convention Unrest

Posted on April 12, 2005 by billycuts

A sprawling body of visual evidence, made possible by inexpensive, lightweight cameras in the hands of private citizens, volunteer observers and the police themselves, has shifted the debate over precisely what happened on the streets during the week of the convention.

For [Dennis] Kyne and 400 others arrested that week, video recordings provided evidence that they had not committed a crime or that the charges against them could not be proved, according to defense lawyers and prosecutors….

Of the 1,670 cases that have run their full course, 91 percent ended with the charges dismissed or with a verdict of not guilty after trial.

NY Times via Nanovirus

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Protests Topple Kyrgyzstan’s Government

Posted on March 26, 2005 by DrQuickbeam

ALMATY, Kazakhstan, March 24—Opposition demonstrators pushed past riot police and seized the presidential headquarters Thursday in the Central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan, toppling the government in the third successful popular revolt in a former Soviet republic in 16 months. President Askar Akayev dropped from sight, and Russian news agencies reported that he had flown to neighboring Kazakhstan.

Yahoo! News

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Maximum pain is aim of new US weapon

Posted on March 2, 2005 by billycuts

The US military is funding development of a weapon that delivers a bout of excruciating pain from up to 2 kilometres away. Intended for use against rioters, it is meant to leave victims unharmed. But pain researchers are furious that work aimed at controlling pain has been used to develop a weapon. And they fear that the technology will be used for torture.

One document is entitled “Sensory consequences of electromagnetic pulses emitted by laser induced plasmas”.

It concerns so-called Pulsed Energy Projectiles (PEPs), which fire a laser pulse that generates a burst of expanding plasma when it hits something solid, like a person (New Scientist print edition, 12 October 2002). The weapon, destined for use in 2007, could literally knock rioters off their feet.

New Scientist

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Nerdshit

Category Archives: Resistance