Sunday, February 24, 2013
Saturday, February 23, 2013
The Clothes Have No Emperor
SPOILER ALERT! This book is not for fans of Ronald Reagan. It is not for Sarah Palin fans. It is not for anyone who can currently call himself or herself a Republican without feeling even a twinge of embarrassment, because everything that is repellent about that party today – the proud ignorance, the shrieking hypocrisy, the utter disregard, no, contempt, for the truth – was given a glorious send-off during the Reagan ’80s.
The Clothes Have No Emperor, first published in 1989, is for anyone who lived through this surreal era not with a sense of pride in being an American – a pride the culture tried to make one feel guilty for not experiencing – but rather of humiliation for being led by this vapid front man for the avaricious, the corrupt and the callous.
It is for anyone who was appalled to the marrow by the reality that no matter how many times Reagan forgot his lines and needed to be publicly cued, or referred to note cards containing scripts for even his most miniscule small talk, or trotted out those relentlessly recycled one-liners yet again (and received, yet again, the obligatory unearned laughs for them), the public and the media nonetheless conspired to pretend that an actor wasn’t playing the role of President of the United States.
It is most especially for anyone too young to have been politically conscious – or even alive – during those eight surreal years, and who might therefore be tempted to buy into the preposterous myth of Reagan’s greatness.
Out of print for two decades, we’re reissuing this collection of idiocy, offensiveness and absurdity to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Reagan’s birth by providing evidence to counter the vigorously propagated fable that Ronald Reagan, Godhead to the bitterly regressive party of greed and hate that the Republicans have become, was a Great President.
Read the first section here for free, then Name Your Price – keeping in mind that it’s hard work maintaining a memory for a nation addicted to amnesia – to download the book.
- See more at: http://www.theclotheshavenoemperor.com/#sthash.bW0bVjP7.dpuf
Thursday, February 21, 2013
there is no tomorrow
we can't stop the global collapse, only prepare ourselves and reduce the impact on our daily lives.
this clip kinda explains why.
Jeremy Hammond – #18729-424
Letter from Jeremy Hammond in Solitary Confinement on Eve of CourtdateThe Sparrow Project
[New York, NY]
The following is a statement released today, February 20th, 2013, by
Jeremy Hammond’s lawyers. Supporters and lawyers have announced that
they will be holding a press conference and rally at the Federal
Courthouse at 9:30am February 21st, 2013 details are available HERE.
» Photo by Jim Newberry | http://jimnewberry.com
The following is Jeremy Hammond in his own
words, written from solitary confinement at The Metropolitan
Correctional Center (MCC) in New York City…
The tragic death of internet freedom fighter
Aaron Swartz reveals the government’s flawed “cyber security strategy”
as well as its systematic corruption involving computer crime
investigations, intellectual property law, and government/corporate
transparency. In a society supposedly based on principles of democracy
and due process, Aaron’s efforts to liberate the internet, including
free distribution of JSTOR academic essays, access to public court
records on PACER, stopping the passage of SOPA/PIPA, and developing the
Creative Commons, make him a hero, not a criminal. It is not the
“crimes” Aaron may have committed that made him a target of federal
prosecution, but his ideas – elaborated in his “Guerrilla Open Access
Manifesto” – that the government has found so dangerous. The United
States Attorney’s aggressive prosecution, riddled with abuse and
misconduct, is what led to the death of this hero. This sad and angering
chapter should serve as a wake up call for all of us to acknowledge the
danger inherent in our criminal justice system.
Aaron’s case is part of the recent aggressive,
politically-motivated expansion of computer crime law where hackers and
activists are increasingly criminalized because of alleged
“cyber-terrorist” threats. The United States Attorney for the Southern
District of New York, Preet Bharara, whose office is prosecuting me and
my co-defendants in the Lulzsec indictment, has used alarmist rhetoric
such as the threat of an imminent “Pearl Harbor like cyber attack” to
justify these prosecutions. At the same time the government routinely
trains and deploys their own hackers to launch sophisticated cyber
attacks against the infrastructure of foreign countries, such as the
Stuxnet and Flame viruses, without public knowledge, oversight,
declarations of war, or consent from international authorities. DARPA,
US Cyber Command, the NSA, and numerous federally-contracted private
corporations openly recruit hackers to develop defensive and offensive
capabilities and build Orwellian digital surveillance networks, designed
not to enhance national security but to advance U.S. imperialism. They
even attend and speak at hacker conferences, such as DEFCON, offer to
bribe hackerspaces for their research, and created the insulting
“National Civic Hacker Day” – efforts which should be boycotted or
confronted every step of the way.
Aaron is a hero because he refused to play
along with the government’s agenda, instead he used his brilliance and
passion to create a more transparent society. Through the free software
movement, open publishing and file sharing, and development of
cryptography and anonymity technology, digital activists have revealed
the poverty of neo-liberalism and intellectual property. Aaron opposed
reducing everything to a commodity to be bought or sold for a profit.
The rise in effectiveness of, and public
support for, movements like Anonymous and Wikileaks has led to an
expansion of computer crime investigations – most importantly
enhancements to 18 U.S.C § 1030, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
(CFAA). Over the years the CFAA has been amended five times and has gone
through a number of important court rulings that have greatly expanded
what the act covers concerning “accessing a protected computer without
authorization.” It is now difficult to determine exactly what conduct
would be considered legal. The definition of a “protected computer” has
been incrementally expanded to include any government or corporate
computer in or outside the U.S. “Authorization,” not explicitly defined
by the CFAA, has also been expanded to be so ambiguous that any use of a
website, network, or PC that is outside of the interest, agenda, or
contractual obligations of a private or government entity could be
criminalized. In Aaron’s case and others the government has defined
violating a service’s Acceptable Use Policy (AUP), Terms of Service
(TOS), or End-User License Agreement (EULA) as illegal. Every time you
sign up for a service like Gmail, Hotmail, or Facebook and click the “I
agree” button that follows a long contract that no one ever reads, you
could be prosecuted under the CFAA if you violate any of the terms.
The sheer number of everyday computer users who
could be considered criminals under these broad and ambiguous
definitions enables the politically motivated prosecution of anyone who
voices dissent. The CFAA should be found unconstitutional under the
void-for-vagueness doctrine of the due process clause. Instead, Congress
proposed bills last year which would double the statutory maximum
sentences and introduce mandatory minimum sentences, similar to the
excessive sentences imposed in drug cases which have been widely opposed
by many federal and state judges.
The “Operation Payback” case in San Jose,
California is another miscarriage of justice where 16 suspected
Anonymous members (including a 16 year old boy) allegedly participated
in a denial-of-service action against PayPal in protest of it’s
financial blockade of Wikileaks. Denial-of-service does not “exceed
authorized access,” as it is virtually indistinguishable from standard
web requests. It is more akin to an electronic sit-in protest,
overloading the website’s servers making it incapable of serving
legitimate traffic, than a criminal act involving stolen private
information or destruction of servers. PayPal’s website was only slow or
unavailable for a matter of hours, yet these digital activists face
prison time of more that 10 years, $250,000 in fines, and felony
convictions because the government wants to criminalize this form of
internet protest and send a warning to would be Wikileaks supporters.
Another recent case is that of Andrew “Weev”
Auernheimer, who last November was convicted under the CFAA. Andrew
discovered that AT&T was publishing customer names and email
addresses on it’s public-facing website, without password protection,
encryption, or firewalls. Instead of acknowledging their own mistake in
violating customer privacy, AT&T sought prison time for Andrew.
Andrew has defended his actions saying, “We have not only a right as
Americans to analyze things that corporations publish and make publicly
accessible but perhaps a moral obligation to tell people about it.”
I am currently facing multiple computer hacking
conspiracy charges due to my alleged involvement with Anonymous,
LulzSec, and AntiSec, groups which have targeted and exposed corruption
in government institutions and corporations such as Stratfor, The
Arizona Department of Public Safety, and HB Gary Federal. My potential
sentence is dramatically increased because the Patriot Act expanded the
CFAA’s definition of “loss.” This allowed Stratfor to claim over 5
million dollars in damages, including the exorbitant cost of hiring
outside credit protection agencies and “infosec” corporations,
purchasing new servers, 1.6 million dollars in “lost potential revenue”
for the time their website was down, and even the cost of a 1.3 million
dollar settlement for a class action lawsuit filed against them. Coupled
with use of “sophisticated means” and “affecting critical
infrastructure” sentence enhancements, if convicted at trial I am facing
a sentence of 30-years-to-life.
Dirty trial tactics and lengthy sentences are
not anomalies but are part of a fundamentally flawed and corrupt
two-tiered system of “justice” which seeks to reap profits from the mass
incarceration of millions, especially people of color and the
impoverished. The use of informants who cooperate in exchange for
lighter sentences is not just utilized in the repressive prosecutions of
protest movements and manufactured “terrorist” Islamophobic
witch-hunts, but also in most drug cases, where defendants face some of
the harshest sentences in the world.
For Aaron Swartz, himself facing 13 felony CFAA
charges, it is likely that it was this intense pressure from relentless
and uncompromising prosecutors, who, while being aware of Aaron’s
psychological fragility, continued to demand prison time, that led to
his untimely death.
Due to widespread public outrage, there is talk
of congressional investigations into the CFAA. But since the same
Congress had proposed increased penalties not even one year ago, any
efforts at reform are unlikely to be more than symbolic. What is needed
is not reform but total transformation; not amendments but abolition.
Aaron is a hero to me because he did not wait for those in power to
realize his vision and change their game, he sought to change the game
himself, and he did so without fear of being labeled a criminal and
imprisoned by a backwards system of justice.
We the people demand free and equal access to
information and technology. We demand transparency and accountability
from governments and big corporations, and privacy for the masses from
invasive surveillance networks.
The government will never be forgiven. Aaron Swartz will never be forgotten.
Get involved with the Jeremy’s Support Network at http://FreeHammond.org
On Facebook at facebook.com/supporthammond
On Twitter @Free_Hammond
On Facebook at facebook.com/supporthammond
On Twitter @Free_Hammond
Please consider mailing a letter, book, or postcard of support to Jeremy while in prison:
Jeremy Hammond – #18729-424
Metropolitan Correctional Center
150 Park Row,
New York, NY 10007
Metropolitan Correctional Center
150 Park Row,
New York, NY 10007
Sunday, February 17, 2013
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