Music file-sharing website The Pirate Bay has been sold.
It is set to be transformed into a legal music site that sees artists and record labels get paid for the downloads they provide.
The Sweden-based website - whose four founders and hosts were sentenced to a year in jail and fined for copyright infringement offences in April - will be acquired by Swedish software company Global Gaming Factory X AB in August.
The Pirate Bay has been sold for 60 million Swedish SEK (£4.7 million), Global Gaming Factory X AB revealed in a statement.
Hans Pandeya, CEO of Global Gaming Factory X AB said that another new change would be faster downloads and increased sound quality for users.
"In order to live on, The Pirate Bay requires a new business model, which satisfies the requirements and needs of all parties, content providers, broadband operators, end users, and the judiciary," he explained.
"Content creators and providers need to control their content and get paid for it," he added. "File-sharers need faster downloads and better quality."
In their own statement, The Pirate Bay chiefs claimed that the ethos of the site would not change despite its new legal status.
"A lot of people are worried," they said. "We're not and you shouldn't be either! The right people with the right attitude and possibilities keep running the site.
"It's time to invite more people into the project, in a way that is secure and safe for everybody. We need that, or the site will die.
"The old crew is still around in different ways. We will also not stop being active in the politics of the internet – quite the opposite."
(Via 'NME')
Wednesday, 1 July 2009
Story That Takes 1,000 Years to Read Is Antidote to Media Whirlwind
San Francisco conceptual artist and journalist Jonathon Keats is trying to rejuvenate literature in the age of hyperspeed media by writing a story that will take a millennium to tell.
The catch? The story, printed on the cover of the recently released Infinity issue of Opium Magazine, is only nine words long.
“I’m interested in exploring deep time,” the thought experimentalist and Wired contributor explained in an e-mail to Wired.com during a visit to Europe, where he is probably concocting a scheme to wormhole Paris or something.
“Like most people, I live my life in a rush, consuming media on the run,” said Keats, who has copyrighted his mind, tried to pass a Law of Identity and attempted to genetically engineer God.
“That may be fine for reading the average blog,” he said, “but something essential is lost when ingesting words is all about speed. My thousand-year story is an antidote. Given the printing process I’ve used, you can’t take in more than one word per century. That’s even slower than reading Proust.”
The printing process in question is a simple but, as usual with Keats, pretty clever idea. The cover is printed in a double layer of standard black ink, with an incrementally screened overlay masking the nine words. Exposed over time to ultraviolet light, the words will be appear at different rates, supposedly one per century.
“The precise quantity of ink covering each word is different, so that the words will appear one at a time,” Keats said. “Provided that your copy of Opium is kept out in the open, and regularly exposed to sunlight over 1,000 years to be read progressively by the next dozen or so generations. Or very, very slowly if you happen to be Ray Kurzweil.”
The odds are very good that Keats’ brainy game will outlive print itself, at least as far as magazines are concerned. But will the pages of Opium last long enough for his story to be told?
“The high-quality acid-free paper on which Opium is printed will certainly last that long,” Keats answered. “Whether humankind will, of course, remains an open question.”
Iran update - Revolution 2.0
A placard displayed during a demonstration opposite the Iranian embassy in London last Friday.Neda, Obama and the Power of Pictures
As Nico put it: "More video emerges of the brave government security officials who roam around attacking inanimate objects."
3:37 PM ET -- Suspicious ballot photos posted by Iran state media? A reader writes, "I believe this is well worth reporting: many interesting photos are being put on the web as I write, a good number of them published by IRNA itself (see here). These are images from the recent Guardians Council TV broadcast session where they 'recounted' some ballot boxes and found out that indeed Ahmadinejad's votes were higher than previously counted. These pictures show two things very clearly: 1) that a whole lot of the ballots that are being recounted are fresh, crisp, unfolded sheets - which makes no sense, given that people typically had to fold these sheets before they can slip them into the ballot boxes, and 2) that the handwriting on so many of the sheets which are votes for 'Ahmadinejad' are the same handwriting (and very clearly so)."
Via HuffPo
After the Crackdown: Iran's Opposition Down but Hardly Out@Time
Tuesday, 30 June 2009
Michael Jackson - Coroners Report
(From the Glasgow Herald)
The LA Coroners Department has reported that the cause of Michael
Jackson's death it at this point uncertain.
They cannot decide whether to blame it on the sunshine, blame it on
the moonlight, blame it on the good times or blame it on the boogie!!!
(Thanx Paul)
The LA Coroners Department has reported that the cause of Michael
Jackson's death it at this point uncertain.
They cannot decide whether to blame it on the sunshine, blame it on
the moonlight, blame it on the good times or blame it on the boogie!!!
(Thanx Paul)
Iran update - Revolution 2.0 (Refresh page)
Iranian regime’s State Security Forces are suppressing Tehran residents in Park Laleh (central Tehran). A number of people have been wounded in sever crackdown by regime’s SSF, according to eyewitnesses.
“They are beating up people everywhere, drivers are blowing horns of their vehicle to protest the brutal repression” one eyewitness said.
In Tajrish square (northern Tehran) and nearby streets anti-riot units are stationed every few meters on both sides of the streets. They stop and check every passerby.
CNN: Violent protests have broken out in Tehran after Ahmadinejad was declared the winner of Iran’s presidential election. #iranelection
No Velvet Revolution for Iran/Fareed Zakaria
When we see the kinds of images that have been coming out of Iran over the past two weeks, we tend to think back to 1989 and Eastern Europe. Then, when people took to the streets and challenged their governments, those seemingly stable regimes proved to be hollow and quickly collapsed. What emerged was liberal democracy. Could Iran yet undergo its own velvet revolution?
When we see the kinds of images that have been coming out of Iran over the past two weeks, we tend to think back to 1989 and Eastern Europe. Then, when people took to the streets and challenged their governments, those seemingly stable regimes proved to be hollow and quickly collapsed. What emerged was liberal democracy. Could Iran yet undergo its own velvet revolution?
It's possible but unlikely. While the regime's legitimacy has cracked -- a fatal wound in the long run -- for now it will probably be able to use its guns and money to consolidate power. And it has plenty of both. Remember, the price of oil was less than $20 a barrel back in 1989. It is $69 now. More important, as Zbigniew Brzezinski has pointed out, 1989 was highly unusual. As a historical precedent, it has not proved a useful guide to other antidictatorial movements.
The three most powerful forces in the modern world are democracy, religion and nationalism. In 1989 in Eastern Europe, all three were arrayed against the ruling regimes. Citizens hated their governments because they deprived people of liberty and political participation. Believers despised communists because they were atheistic, banning religion in countries where faith was deeply cherished. And people rejected their regimes because they saw them as imposed from the outside by a much-disliked imperial power, the Soviet Union.
The situation in Iran is more complex. Democracy clearly works against this repressive regime. The forces of religion, however, are not so easily aligned against it. Many, possibly most, Iranians appear to be fed up with theocracy. But that does not mean they are fed up with religion. And it does appear that the more openly devout Iranians -- the poor, those in rural areas -- voted for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
There is one way religion could be used against Iran's leaders, but it would involve an unlikely scenario: Were Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani to issue a fatwa condemning Tehran from his base in Najaf, Iraq, it would be a seismic event, probably resulting in the regime's collapse. Remember, Sistani is Iranian, probably more revered in the entire Shiite world than any other ayatollah, and he is opposed to the basic doctrine of velayat-e faqih -- rule by a spiritual leader -- that created the Islamic Republic of Iran. His own view is that clerics should not be involved in politics, which is why he has steered clear of any such role in Iraq. But he is unlikely to publicly criticize the Iranian regime (though he did refuse to see Ahmadinejad when the latter visited Iraq in March 2008).
Nationalism is the most complex of the three forces. Over most of its history, the Iranian regime has exploited nationalist sentiment. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini came to power by battling the shah, who was widely seen as an American puppet. Soon after the revolution, Iraq attacked Iran, and the mullahs again wrapped themselves in the flag. The United States supported Iraq in that war, ignoring Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons against Iranians -- something Iranians have never forgotten. The Bush administration's veiled threats to attack Iran over the past eight years allowed the mullahs to drum up support. (Every Iranian dissident, from Akbar Ganji to Shirin Ebadi, has noted that talk of air strikes on Iran strengthened the regime.) And it is worth remembering that the United States still funds guerrilla outfits and opposition groups that are trying to topple the Islamic Republic. Most of these are tiny groups with no chance of success, funded largely to appease right-wing members of Congress. But the Tehran government is able to portray this as an ongoing anti-Iranian campaign.
In this context, President Obama has been right to tread cautiously -- for the most part -- to extend his moral support to Iranian protesters but not get politically involved. The United States has always underestimated the raw power of nationalism across the world, assuming that people will not be taken in by cheap and transparent appeals against foreign domination. But look at what is happening in Iraq, where Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki boasts that U.S. troop withdrawals are a "a heroic repulsion of the foreign occupiers." Of course Maliki would not be in office but for those occupying forces, who protect his government to this day. A canny politician, though, he knows what will appeal to the Iraqi people.
Ahmadinejad is also a politician with considerable mass appeal. He knows that accusing the United States and Britain of interference works in some quarters. Our effort should be to make sure that those accusations seem as loony and baseless as possible. Were President Obama to get out in front, vociferously supporting the protests, he would be helping Ahmadinejad's strategy, not America's.
RT Police and plain clothes forces were settled across the Valiasr street to disallow the protesters to make a human chain #iranelection
!!!US forces attempt to hijack Iranian oil field@IRPressTV
the recount took at least 3 hours. Original full count took 2hrs? #iranelection takes time to make truth even more TRUTHY
RT Iran Iran’s GC declares #IranElection results valid. Pigs fly. Planets revolve around earth. Earth's flat. Sail ocean & fall off edge.
Karoubi, repeats call for an annulment of the poll, saying it was "the only way to regain people's trust" #iranelection
Iran Council confirms Ahmadinejad election victory@Reuters
1:35 PM ET -- Reaction to the Guardian Council's election ruling. Iranians on Twitter say people have begun protesting news that Iran's main election body had affirmed Ahmadinejad's victory. People have "come out on the streets... [they] are in the various city squares," one writes.@HuffPo
What is going on in the silence of Evin prison?@ReportersSansFrontieres
The Clash of Islam and Democracy in Iran
Sunday 28 June 2009
by: Dilip Hiro | Visit article original @ TomDispatch.com
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei delivers a speech after casting his vote to elect a new president, at his office in Tehran on June 12, 2009. (Photo: Olivier Laban-Mattei / Getty Images)
The Islamic revolution faces the classic dilemma of all revolutions.
By marshalling the regime's coercive instruments, Iran's 70-year-old supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, has, for now, succeeded in curbing the popular, peaceful challenge to the authenticity of Iran's fateful June 12th presidential election. But he has paid a heavy political price.
Before his June 19th hard-line speech at a Friday prayer congregation, Khamanei had the mystique of a just arbiter of authority, perched on a lofty platform far above the contentiousness of day-to-day politics. In his sermon, he asserted the validity of the reelection of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad while the Guardian Council, the constitutional body charged with validating any national election, was still dealing with 646 complaints about possible election misbehavior and fraud. As a result, he damaged his status as a just ruler, a matter of grave importance since justice is a vital element in Islamic values.
Furthermore, by boycotting the June 19th congregation, former presidents Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Muhammad Khatami, as well as Mahdi Karrubi, former Speaker of the Iranian Parliament - all of them respected mullahs - exposed a deep rift in the ruling religious establishment. That bodes ill for the future of the Islamic Republic.
Khamanei has won the immediate battle, but the conflict between hard-liners and reformists is far from over. Taking a long-term view, Khamanei and his hard line cohorts face a superhuman task of countering an inexorably rising trend. Quite simply, the demographic make-up of Iran favors their reformist adversaries.
A glance at the republic's history bears this out.
Two Decades of Revolution
Between 1979, the year of the Islamic revolution, and 1999, Iran's population doubled to 65 million, two-thirds of them under 25 years of age. Those young Iranians had no direct experience or memory of the pre-Islamic regime of the Shah - its inequities and injustices, and its subservient relationship with Washington. Therefore, their commitment to the Islamic regime was less than total. Moreover, the post-revolutionary educational system had proven inadequate when it came to socializing them the way the republic's religious leaders wanted.
During those two decades, Iran's student body increased almost threefold, to 19 million. The overall literacy rate jumped from 58% to 82%, with the figure for females - 28% in 1979 - tripling. There was a remarkable upsurge in the enrollment of women in universities. Nationally, their share of university student bodies shot up to 60%. At prestigious Tehran University, they were a majority in all faculties, including science and law.
The total of university graduates, which stood at 430,000 in 1979, grew nine-fold in those years. As elsewhere in the world, university students and graduates would become a vital engine for change.
Much to the disappointment of the mullahs, a study of university students in the late 1990s showed that whereas 83% of them watched television, only 5% watched religious programs. Of the 58% who read extracurricular books, barely 6% showed interest in religious literature.
In his book, A Study of Student Political Behavior in Today's Iran, Professor Majid Muhammadi divided university students into three categories: those born into largely Islamic working or traditional middle-class households (traders and craftsmen); those born to secular, or nominally Islamic, modern middle class parents (teachers and doctors); and those raised in an environment that mixed traditional Islam and secularism.
While the first category was loyal to the regime, and the second kept a low profile, shunning politics, it was the students in the last, and largest, category who felt deeply conflicted. While linked to Islam through tradition, they were attracted to modern, Westernized culture politically and socially. In attempting to resolve the conflict, most of them became politically active, and were transformed into a force for social and political change.
By and large, university students were interested in watching foreign television programs, finding the national channels unimaginative and propagandistic. A poorly enforced ban on satellite dishes meant they could easily get access to the BBC, CNN, and the Voice of America. In the post-1999 decade, the arrival of the Internet, e-mail, blogging, YouTube, Facebook, and most recently Twitter, opened up opportunities previously not available to their older peers.
Irrespective of their social backgrounds, what indisputably impinges on the daily lives of university students and other young Iranians are the restrictions the regime tries to impose on their social and personal freedoms, including going to mixed-sex parties, holding hands with someone other than a marriage partner, drinking alcoholic beverages, listening to modern Western music, watching foreign television channels via satellite, and having extramarital sex. While reformists recognize that restricting such activities is having the singular effect of alienating the young from the Islamic Republic, their conservative opponents consider these restrictions essential to uphold Islamic morality and culture.
Not surprisingly, politically conscious university students have been striving to enlarge the arena of personal freedoms as a means of countering social repression and administrative corruption, and making the Islamic system more transparent and accountable.
Politics in Command
It was against this background that, in 1997, a presidential election was conducted. Muhammad Khatami, a reformist outsider, unblemished by corruption, proceeded to trounce his rival, Ali Akbar Nateq Nouri - the erstwhile Speaker of parliament favored by the religious establishment and perceived to be corrupt - by a margin of almost three to one. In the next election, Khatami trumped his nearest rival by a five-to-one margin.
Notwithstanding periodic setbacks due to a dispersion of power among the office of president, the parliament, and the judiciary, Khatami created an environment in which the area of social, cultural, and political freedoms expanded.
Initially, for instance, the authorities were very strict about enforcing the wearing of the hijab (a head-covering scarf) and banning the use of make-up for women, nor did they allow young men and women to sit in the same classrooms in colleges and universities. By the time of Khatami's reelection in 2005, however, the authorities were tolerating young women who flouted the strict Islamic dress code of covering themselves fully, except for face and hands. They even allowed an occasional rock concert and they were giving more leeway to non-governmental organizations.
During the first year of Khatami's presidency, the country experienced an explosion of new publications. Following a landslide victory by the reformists in the first round of parliamentary elections in February 2000, a newly bullish pro-reform press even began publishing stories of corruption in the pre-Khatami period. These proved immensely popular.
Khatami's supporters viewed this as a sign of the growing maturity of the Islamic system and the evolution of democratic governance. Before the second round of the elections could take place in May, however, a conservative-minded parliament reacted speedily. Encouraged by Khamanei, it stiffened the Press Law in April, leading to the closure of dozens of publications by the judiciary.
In the 2005 presidential contest, leading reformists were barred from the race by the Guardian Council. Deprived of real choice, most reformist voters boycotted the election. This enabled the hard-line mayor of Tehran, Ahmadinejad - a Khamanei favorite - to trounce Rafsanjani, an affluent, pragmatic conservative blemished by a reputation for corruption.
During Ahmadinejad's presidency, university classes were re-segregated by gender. The law banning satellite dishes was enforced vigorously. The morality police resorted to patrolling the streets to ensure that women wore proper Islamic dress and unmarried couples refrained from holding hands. This was but a part of Ahmadinejad's drive to return society to the early years of the Islamic revolution.
Little wonder then that, in the run-up to the 2009 presidential election, young voters rallied behind Mir Hussein Mousavi, whose academic wife, the artist Zahra Rahnavard, spoke of the hijab becoming optional for women. Mousavi promised to disband the morality police and appoint women to important government jobs.
The Nature of the Iranian Revolution
In trying to recreate the environment of the early days of the Iranian revolution in the absence of the conditions that brought about the collapse of the old order of the Shah, the country's hard line leaders are defying both human nature and history.
They are ignoring the fact that most people tend to strive only to the extent that is necessary to survive, procreate, and lead a comfortable life. More important, human beings simply cannot continue functioning at a heightened level for decades on end. Revolutions are born out of periods of acute crisis and extraordinary fervor combined with high idealism. With time, red hot zeal cools, and so does a revolution. Idealism gives way to pragmatism - and, of course, corruption.
No less than the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, bowed to inescapable reality when he accepted a United Nations-brokered ceasefire with Iraq in 1988, after endlessly exhorting Iranians to fight on for 20 years - until victory.
Such softening is common to all revolutions.
Yet in the regional context, what happened in Iran in the late 1970s had been unique. Every previous post-World War II dramatic regime change in the Middle East had come about thanks to overnight military coups. The overthrow of the seemingly unassailable Shah of Iran in February 1979, on the other hand, was the culmination of a relentless two-year-long revolutionary movement.
Globally, too, the Iranian revolution stood apart. All the revolutions of the last century, starting with the Mexican revolution of 1910, were secular and focused on changing property and class relations. Not the one in Iran.
Its leader, Khomeini, made adroit use of Shiite history and Iranian nationalism to attract ever-increasing support. He managed to unite the disparate anti-Shah forces, both religious and secular - including Marxists of various shades - by his most radical demand: the deposition of Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. Although his revolutionary movement included secularists, only the religious segment was capable, via the mosque, of providing a national organizational network down to the village level.
Both as an institution and a place of congregation, the mosque proved critical. Since the state could not suppress the mosque in a country that was 98% Muslim, it offered a sanctuary to the revolutionary movement. That was why Khomeini instructed the clergy to base the Revolutionary Komitehs (Committees) coordinating the anti-Shah movement in those mosques.
It was in this way that the unprecedented upheaval, claiming an estimated 10,000 to 40,000 lives (largely unarmed Iranians killed by military gunfire), turned into the successful "Islamic revolution." It became a preamble to the founding of the Islamic Republic of Iran. That term "republic" - not "state" or "emirate" (as in the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan under the Taliban) - in the official title was, and remains, highly significant. Thirty years on, the partisans of Mousavi are now arguing that the recent electoral fraud undermines the founding principle of the post-Shah regime: that power lies with the public.
Overthrowing an established order is a hard, bloody affair, but making a revolution stick is even more demanding. In the case of Iran, the revolutionary regime became a target of aggression when Iraq's Saddam Hussein launched his invasion in September 1980. The subsequent eight-year war helped merge Iranian nationalism into the post-Shah regime, and stabilized it.
Following Khomeini's death in 1989, the transition to his successor Khamanei as the Supreme Leader, assisted by the popularly elected president Rafsanjani, was smooth. Initially, Khamanei took his cues from Rafsanjani, a wily politician. As he consolidated his hold over the military, the Revolutionary Guard Corps, and its auxiliary, the Basij militia, however, he began operating independently and drifted away from Rafsanjani.
Now, both hard-liners and reformists are competing to show their loyalty to Shiite Islam. Its founder, Imam Hussein, the Great Martyr, leading a band of 72 retainers, died in 680 AD while battling a force of 4,000 to stake his rightful claim to the caliphate usurped by his rival. The moral of this episode, which lies at the heart of Shiite Islam, is that the true believer must not shirk from challenging the established order if it has become unjust and oppressive.
Competing Loyalties to Shiite Islam
In today's Shiite Iran, the partisans of Mousavi have adopted green, the color of Islam, as their brand. They shout "Allah-u Akbar" (God is Great) and "We want [Imam] Hussein" in the streets and from the rooftops, while their leader invokes the Quran to demand justice. They are not demanding regime change, only an overdue change in the regime.
For his part, Supreme Leader Khamanei sees the hand of God in the overwhelming victory of Ahmadinejad. The riot police and Basij militia regard him as their spiritual guide and consider any challenge to his word or deed as a challenge to Islam. Ignoring massive evidence to the contrary, Khamanei has ruled out an electoral fraud on the grounds that such a possibility is inconceivable in Iran's Islamic system.
While locked in a struggle, both sides claim to be pursuing the ideal of a just Islamic state. Each remains aware of the value of martyrdom.
The Iranian security forces' beatings, baton charges, and tear gassing of unarmed, peaceful protestors, as well as mass arrests, are deplorable. It is worth noting that most of the firing of live ammunition by the security personnel seems to have been in the air. That explains why the fatalities in the massive and repeated street protests in Tehran have remained relatively low, totaling 15, according to official sources, which also claim that eight Basij militiamen have been killed. Media reports generally have cited 17 deaths of protestors so far, though rumors of higher death tolls abound.
What matters most to the government, as well as its opponents, is the number of people killed, or "martyred."
The speed with which the authorities have tried to hijack the killing of 26-year-old Neda Aghan Soltan in Tehran by a bullet almost certainly fired by a uniformed member of the security forces is illustrative. They have declared her to be a Basiji martyr, allegedly killed by pro-Mousavi protestors, who, in response, rushed to circulate worldwide the shocking image of her dying in the street.
Given its Shiite underpinning, the government remains conscious that resortomg to excessive violence could turn opponents into that most dangerous of symbols: martyrs.
Until the June 12th election - despite evidence of modest tinkering with the first round of the 2005 presidential vote - post-Shah Iran seemed to indicate that Islam and democracy could work in harmony. The upheaval since then has demonstrated that when strains between the two concepts develop, it is democracy that gets short shrift.
That is bad news for Muslims - and non-Muslims - worldwide.
--------
Dilip Hiro is the author of five books on Iran, the latest being "The Iranian Labyrinth: Journeys Through Theocratic Iran and its Furies" (Nation Books), as well as most recently "Blood of the Earth: The Battle for the World's Vanishing Oil Resources." His upcoming book, "After Empire: The Rise of a Multipolar World," will be published by Nation Books later this year.
Thanx Darren
What a surprise!
Iran's top legislative body confirms Ahmadinejad's victory in June 12 presidential election after a recount. (Reuters) #Iranelection After the conclusion of the partial vote recount, Iran's electoral watchdog, the Guardian Council has confirmed the result of the June 12 poll.
After the announcement of the result of Iran's presidential election, which saw President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad re-elected to a second four-year term, provoked major protests in the country, the Guardian Council set up a special committee to do a partial vote recount.
Iran's top legislative body confirmed that the recount of 10 percent of the ballot boxes carried out on Monday had shown no irregularities in the vote.
In a letter to Interior Minister Sadeq Mahsouli on Monday, head of the Guardian Council Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, confirmed the result of the polls, state television reported.
After the announcement of the result of Iran's presidential election, which saw President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad re-elected to a second four-year term, provoked major protests in the country, the Guardian Council set up a special committee to do a partial vote recount.
Iran's top legislative body confirmed that the recount of 10 percent of the ballot boxes carried out on Monday had shown no irregularities in the vote.
In a letter to Interior Minister Sadeq Mahsouli on Monday, head of the Guardian Council Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, confirmed the result of the polls, state television reported.
What a surprise!
Iran's top legislative body confirms Ahmadinejad's victory in June 12 presidential election after a recount. (Reuters) #Iranelection
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