Thursday, 28 July 2011

The Daily Show segment that caused the UK ban

It's against the law to show clips from Parliament in a comedy setting in the UK. The same rule applies here in Australia too...

'Topiary' arrested

Reports are emerging that Topiary, a key member and spokesman of LulzSec, has been arrested.
Officers from the Metropolitan Police Service’s Police Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU) arrested a 19-year-old man in an intelligence-led operation today.
The announcement was made on the Metropolitan Police Website, and the arrest has been made as part of an “ongoing international investigation into the criminal activity of the so-called “hacktivist” groups Anonymous and LulzSec”. The statement also confirms that they believe the man they have is “Topiary”.
The suspect was arrested at a residential address in the Shetland Islands, off the north east coast of Scotland, and he is being transported to a police station in central London. His address is currently being searched.
Police are also searching another address in Lincolnshire, and a 17-year-old male is being interviewed under caution in connection with the inquiry, though he has not been arrested.
It’s thought that ‘Topiary’ is second-in-command at LulzSec, and the ‘public’ face of the hacktivist group. Topiary was notable for his eloquent writing, and it may surprise some to learn that the man suspected of being Topiary is still a teenager.
Topiary is thought to manage the main LulzSec Twitter account, which was last updated 5 hours ago, though he likely had a hand in most of the group’s announcements. He’s also thought to be well-known among hackers with links to more senior Anonymous members.
Up until now, very little has been known about his identity, though he has been referred to as ‘Daniel’ in some leaked transcripts in the past. And it seems that Topiary had wiped his Twitter feed too, leaving a single, solitary message, perhaps in anticipation of the net closing in on him:
We’ve written extensively about both LulzSec and Anonymous in recent months. LulzSec announced in June that it was to cease activities after 50 days, but the group was soon back in the fold. And just last week, we reported on LulzSec and Anonymous’ joint statement, which was directed at the FBI.
And today’s arrest has happened on the same day LulzSec and Anonymous issued another joint statement calling on people to boycott PayPal. “PayPal’s willingness to fold to legislation should be proof enough that they don’t deserve the customers they get. They do not deserve your business, and they do not deserve your respect.”
Its statement continued:

“In recent weeks, we’ve found ourselves outraged at the FBI’s willingness to arrest and threaten those who are involved in ethical, modern cyber operations. Law enforcement continues to push its ridiculous rules upon us – Anonymous “suspects” may face a fine of up to 500,000 USD with the addition of 15 years’ jail time, all for taking part in a historical activist movement. Many of the already-apprehended Anons are being charged with taking part in DDoS attacks against corrupt and greedy organizations, such as PayPal.”

The LulzSec and Anonymous hacktivist groups seem to be spread far and wide. Last week we reported that the FBI had raided three people’s homes in New York, thought to be members of Anonymous. Shortly after, it was revealed that a 16-year old leading member of LulzSec, known as TFlow, had been taken into custody in London.
And at the time of writing, the Lulzsecurity website has been taken offline too: http://lulzsecurity.com/.
We’re sure there will be further statements from both LulzSec and Anonymous in due course, but it seems that the net is certainly closing in, and it will be interesting to see where the hacktivists go from here.
Paul Sawers @'TNW'

LulzSec hacking suspect 'Topiary' arrested

A Quietus Guide To The Work Of Mark Kozelek

A Situation of Parenti Control? Has WikiLeaks Inspired Artist @ExiledSurfer Been Censored, Blocked on US Government Networks?

King Midas Sound - Goodbye Girl (Kuedo Mix)

Kevin Martin Interview

♪♫ Factory Floor #2 @ ATP I'll Be Your Miror (July 23rd 2011- Alexandra Palace London)

'Nevermind' – Deluxe Edition Tracklist

CD One

Original Album
'Smells Like Teen Spirit'
'In Bloom'
'Come As You Are’
'Breed'
'Lithium'
'Polly'
'Territorial Pissings'
'Drain You'
'Lounge Act'
'Stay Away'
'On A Plain'
'Something In The Way'

The B-Sides
'Even In His Youth'
'Aneurysm'
'Curmudgeon'
'D-7' live At The BBC
'Been A Son' live
'School' live
'Drain You' live
'Sliver' live
'Polly' live

CD Two

The Smart Studio Sessions
'In Bloom' previously unreleased
'Immodium' (Breed) previously unreleased
'Lithium' previously unreleased
'Polly Previously' unreleased mix
'Pay To Play'
'Here She Comes Now'
'Dive' previously unreleased
'Sappy' previously unreleased

The Boombox Rehearsals
'Smells Like Teen Spirit'
'Verse Chorus Verse' previously unreleased
'Territorial Pissings' previously unreleased
'Lounge Act' previously unreleased
'Come As You Are'
'Old Age' previously unreleased
'Something In The Way' previously unreleased
'On A Plain' previously unreleased

BBC Sessions
'Drain You' previously unreleased
'Something In The Way' previously unreleased

CD Three

The Devonshire Mixes
'Smells Like Teen Spirit'
'In Bloom'
'Come As You Are'
'Breed'
'Lithium'
'Territorial Pissings'
'Drain You'
'Lounge Act'
'Stay Away'
'On A Plain'
'Something In The Way'

CD Four

Live At The Paramount Theatre
'Jesus Doesn’t Want Me For A Sunbeam'
'Aneurysm'
'Drain You'
'School'
'Floyd The Barber'
'Smells Like Teen Spirit'
'About A Girl'
'Polly'
'Breed'
'Sliver'
'Love Buzz'
'Lithium'
'Been A Son'
'Negative Creep'
'On A Plain'
'Blew'
'Rape Me'
'Territorial Pissings'
'Endless, Nameless'

DVD

Live At The Paramount Theatre
'Jesus Doesn’t Want Me For A Sunbeam'
'Aneurysm'
'Drain You'
'School'
'Floyd The Barber'
'Smells Like Teen Spirit'
'About A Girl'
'Polly'
'Breed'
'Sliver'
'Love Buzz'
'Lithium'
'Been A Son'
'Negative Creep'
'On A Plain'
'Blew'
'Rape Me'
'Territorial Pissings'
'Endless, Nameless'

Music Videos
'Smells Like Teen Spirit'
'Come As You Are Music'
'Lithium'
'In Bloom'

Via

John Lydon at the Mojo Awards 2011

Wednesday, 27 July 2011

Hack Work

NY Mummy Smugglers Reveal Vast Antiquities Black Market

The rescue of an ancient Egyptian mummy's sarcophagus this month from alleged smugglers in New York — the first time authorities say an international artifacts' smuggling ring was dismantled within the United States — sounds more like the plot of a movie than reality.
Amazingly, however, mummy smuggling not only still happens today, it was once so common that enough mummies were available to be ground up and sold as powder, archaeologists reveal.
"Mummy powder was something you could buy in pharmacies up to 1920, because people thought it was a type of medication," said Egyptologist Regine Schulz, curator of ancient art at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.
Today's black market for mummy and other antiquities is in the billions of dollars, though exact numbers aren't known. Besides not having a clear bead on the breadth of trafficking in Egyptian artifacts, scientists and officials say it's often difficult to protect the precious artifacts as the Egyptian desert is so vast...

Continue reading

Charles Q. Choi @'Live Science'

Is hip hop driving the Arab Spring?

Let's stop assuming the police are on our side

'The Beach Beneath the Streets': A Pleasant Meander Through the Situationist Labyrinth

In the Romantic mythologies of the market niche formerly known as the counterculture, the Situationist International (SI) occupies a special place. Founded officially in Alba, Italy, in 1957 and dissolved in 1972, the SI sought alternatives to the strictures of the capitalist ruling order by exploring techniques for opening up experience to the fulfillment of authentic desire. Among those techniques were derive, the drift, unplanned excursions typically into the urban environment to uncover its objective and subjective conditions; detournement, diversion or derailment, the appropriation and alteration of images and other expressions of the market system that would expose their contradictions; and the potlatch, grand expenditures of time and resources in defiance of capitalist rationality and utility.
The SI is said to have played a leading role in the general strikes in France in May 1968, inspired the fashion, music, and lifestyles of ‘70s punk subculture, and set the agenda for postmodern media interventions such as culture jamming, sampling, and other forms of hacktivism. McKenzie Wark‘s new book The Beach Beneath the Streets: The Everyday Life and Glorious Times of the Situationist International, takes its title from one of most the famous SI phrases from May 1968: “Sous les paves, la plage!” (“Under the pavement, the beach!)
Given his profile as a prominent contemporary media theorist, it should come as no surprise that Wark has been heavily influenced by Situationism. Indeed, his celebrated book A Hacker Manifesto (Harvard, 2004) took obvious cues from SI frontman Guy Debord‘s magnum opus, The Society of Spectacle, both in terms of its sublimely aphoristic form and its cryptic theoretical content. His next book Gamer Theory (Harvard, 2007) was in essence a requiem for the unrestrained spirit of play animating the notion of derive, now corralled within the multilevel structures of computer video games, set by the boundaries of what Wark terms their ruling “allegorithms” (a mashup of the words allegory + algorithm, meant to convey the way in which imaginative possibility has been short-circuited by the digital code embedded in predetermined game narratives).
Most recently, Wark lectured on the Situationists at Columbia University, the documentation of which has been issued by Princeton Architectural Press under the title 50 Years of Recuperation of the Situationist International. The Beach Beneath the Streets expands on that last text, including whole sections that have been incorporated nearly verbatim...