This image has been repeatedly removed from Facebook user profiles because it’s been reported as pornography/nudity. Fail and fie on Facebook, or rather on the blue-stocking, onion-eyed morans who keep reporting it and the overworked outsourced workers who have no clue.

Facebook has a strict policy against the sharing of pornographic content and any explicitly sexual content where a minor is involved. We also impose limitations on the display of nudity. We aspire to respect people’s right to share content of personal importance, whether those are photos of a sculpture like Michelangelo’s David or family photos of a child breastfeeding.

How is an image of double mastectomy survivor with a full-breast plate tattoo any more “pornographic” than a family photo of breast feeding?  And really, who cares? Can’t FB maybe focus on the slew of obvious porn (full closeup insertion) profiles that keep showing up in our  “people you might know” columns (and maybe figure out who is trafficking those women)? Dog-fighting and neo-Nazi hate pages?

It takes a lot of effort to push change through on Facebook, and so far over 45,000 people have liked/and or shared this photo, a celebration of strength and beauty, originally published in Margaret Mifflin’s book  Bodies of Subversion: A Secret History of Women and Tattoos. The photo was reposted  with full credit in tattoo forums on Facebook where it spread virally and eventually upset some people who maybe should just re-jigger their settings or unfriend whoever sent it,  rather than getting all sandy-pantsed over it.  Or maybe they just are offended by the cute squirrel.

On February 18, the informational website Reddit will blackout to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act.  There are calls for Google and Facebook to do the same.

Here’s what you can do to protest SOPA:

Don’t use the Internet on February 18.

If that proves too painful, use it for email only (and maybe 4Chan) Stay off Facebook. Avoid Google searches, online shopping, porn, etc.

Still too hard? How about posting the image above as both your profile photo on Facebook, and as a photo album, along with other anti censorship jpgs?

The Facebook idea is the brainchild of Peter Tassi, a contributor to Forbes.

As they say on teh internets, I find Tassi’s views intriguing and would like to subscribe to his newsletter.

Wingnuts have been circulating this photo, claiming it’s from Occupy Wall Street. One woman who claims to work/have worked at the New York Stock Exchange posted it on her Facebook page and where it was shared over 1000 times wrote this as the caption:

This is the NO-CLASS Wall Street occupiers. They are rutting in the street. They are defecating in the street. This is what the democratic party is applauding and embracing? America is in trouble; When morality is willingly being usurped by corruption; Freedom sold for limitation and servitude; Honor traded for degradation, a society can not survive.

Fail. It’s from a 2007 Portland, Oregon anti-war demonstration. The building in the background with its distinctive clock tower–the  former headquarters of The Portland Telegram–was placed on the National Registry of Historic Places in 1994; ten years later renovations were completed, and it opened as a mixed-use apartment/retail complex. Here the Creative Commons photo from Wikipedia:

Troll? Disinformation? Either way, utter, epic fail. Heck, even I knew this wasn’t New York.

LittleGreenFootballs.com links to their original March 19, 2007 post with photo, via Indybay, which shows the protestors wearing the traditional black scarves of anarchist groups and looking nothing like the forefront hipsters the media is so fond of snapping at OWS. Or anything like the hundreds of regular people of all races and demographics who are coming out in New York.

I think the wingnuts are scared and desperate. First the protesters are painted as ignorant dirty hippies/trustifarians.

The next push against Occupy was anti-Semitism, which is nuts–the Jewish Labor Committee marched on Saturday in LA, and today  Sukkoth was celebrated at Occcupy LA. And now this blatant attempt to use an old, utterly unrelated photo as propaganda. Will wingnuts’  desperate terror and lies know no bounds of decency? Next you know they’ll be reporting that Occupiers are roasting and eating babies. Which is patently ridiculous, given the number of vegetarians in the group.

Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, a North Carolina native,  says he and his fiance Sean Eldridge will donate $10 to Equality North Carolina for each new “Like” on the group’s Facebook page, up to $10,000. That’s a 1,000 Likes which should be no problem! Who doesn’t like weddings? The money is vital to stave off the North Carolina legislative sneak attack on marriage equality: HB 61.

Originally HB 61 sought to limit the terms of elected officials. QNotes reports that term limits have been removed from the bill and replaced with the text of the anti-LGBT constitutional amendment which

seeks to clarify an earlier Senate version which banned all recognition of all relationships other than marriage. The new version retains language that calls opposite-sex marriage the state’s “only domestic legal union,” but adds,  ”This section does not prohibit a private party from entering into contracts with another private party; nor does this section prohibit courts from adjudicating the rights of private parties pursuant to such contracts.”

In his letter, Chris Hughes writes:

Because there could not be a more critical time to support the work of Equality NC, my fiancé, Sean Eldridge, and I have pledged to donate $10 for each person who likes Equality NC’s page on Facebook – up to $10,000 – to support the work of the organization between now and Tuesday. We hope that others will join us and contribute what they can of their time, energy, and resources to help defeat this anti-gay measure…

The next Facebook or Apple or Google could be created by another North Carolinian. Be mindful of how you treat them and their families.

photo: Creative Commons: hiroshiken

Academy Award winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black’s play 8 covering the Proposition 8 hearings and starring Morgan Freeman, Anthony Edwards, Cheyenne Jackson, Christine Lahti, Rob Reiner, Yeardley Smith and Marisa Tomei hits Broadway on September 19th in a one-time staged reading at the Eugene O’Neil Theater to benefit the American Foundation for Equal Rights. Tickets start at $500.

AFER was formed specifically to fund the legal challenge against Proposition 8. A previous fundraiser, featuring a full length concert with Elton John was held earlier this year in Los Angeles.

8 is based on the California Supreme Court trial transcripts, and Milk screenwriter Black, who spent six months writing the play, told the New York Times:

I mined the best arguments on both sides, trying to capture everything on their side that was a winning point and anything on our side that was a winning point.

Luckily Black didn’t have to deal with these kind of arguments found on Facebook.

Wow, what’s next, blaming gays for hurricanes? Oh wait the heterosexual Rick Perry’s buddy/partner in Jesuspalooza, James Hagee has already done that.

8 will also be staged at Carnegie Mellon University, Northwest, and the University of Michigan.

[Thanks, Pam Spaulding for FB tip; h/t OnTopMagazine]

photo: creative commons, Mary McTavish

Anonymous’ #opBART dox dump of user names, emails and passwords presaged Larry Flynt’s Huffington Post blog today in which the free speech advocate wrote:

Any information you put out into cyberspace could come back to bite you in the ass.

That’s why it’s a good idea to use different passwords (and email addresses!) for marketing sites, and paying bills, trolling, visiting AshleyMadison.com, etc. (I wonder if Flynt’s Hustler site uses cookies?) Flynt goes on to point out:

Social media sites and search engines act as data mines, storing information that could later be accessed by the government and used against you in court…

The Feds have no problem letting companies collect and exploit our personal information because it makes running a surveillance state that much easier to do. Whenever the government wants to find out what weird shit you’re up to on the Internet, guess what ­they’re going to find out? You can thank Google, Facebook, Walmart and all the other megacorps for that.

Which is why we like teh lulz at Christine O’Donnell’s, Marcus Bachmann’s and Glenn Beck‘s Amazon sites:

[h/t Wonkette]

Thanks to Hot Chicks with Guy Fawkes Masks for photo permission (a NSFW site!)

Google placed this ad, featuring author activist Dan Savage, during Glee. Yes it’s an ad for Google Chrome and its marvels. But the hugest marvel the Google commercial’s integration and support of the “It Gets Better” campaign. It Gets Better was created in

In September 2010 Savage created a YouTube video with his partner Terry to inspire hope for young people facing harassment. Since then over 10,000 user created videos have been posted, as well as PSAs featuring  President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Adam Lambert, Anne Hathaway, Colin Farrell, Matthew Morrison, Joe Jonas, Joel Madden, Ke$ha, Sarah Silverman, Tim Gunn, Ellen DeGeneres, Suze Orman, along with the staffs of The Gap, Google, Facebook, Pixar and many more. From ItGetsBetter.org:

Many LGBT youth can’t picture what their lives might be like as openly gay adults. They can’t imagine a future for themselves. So let’s show them what our lives are like, let’s show them what the future may hold in store for them.

It was awesome to see something like this sponsored by a major corporation on national television during sweeps month. HUGE!

Someone got kinda mad at me for writing about Paul Gallegos winning the Humboldt County Attorney’s race, an online writer named Rose who is virulently anti-Gallegos. On December 5, a week after I wrote the post about Gallegos’ win, Rose threw down cranky, ad hominem, gritty sandpaper neener epithets, which were pretty funny.

Despicable propagandist

is snappy, fer shur. But not as cool (nor anywhere as accurate) as when I was called a

voodoo hussy.

And that was to my face, in real life.

Still, nice use of the Word-of-the Day Calendar! Frankly I think

propagandista

would have been a lot cleverer. And one must keep in mind that propaganda is in the eyes of both the creator/creatrix and the reader/s.

Because this article was up on FDL, Rose wrote

It really must be about right vs left after all. /(sarc)

I covered Gallegos because there things he supports that I support, things I like about him–for instance,  he says he’s heard of Big Flats, and he also says he’s never surfed the mythic surf spot, nor does he claim to know where it is. And that means something to a lot of folks in Humboldt.

Rose  complained that the comments were closed on my post. Well, the comments on all my posts close after a certain amount of time. That’s just what happens.

So anyway, Rose does allow comments on her page:

Post a Comment

Comment moderation is enabled. This means your comment won’t show up unless or until it is approved. Shoulda done this years ago. This is primarily to limit the attacks on other posters. If you have something to add to the topic at hand, you should have no trouble. Thanks – and weigh in…

Gosh yeah, within moments someone did have something to add which was approved–someone who was more comfy posting anonymously:

Anonymous said…
She swallows. And i don’t mean koolaid.

Now that’s some weighing in on the topic at hand. Thar she blows!

(And when is swallowing a bad thing?)

Rose then posted her disdain for my lack of a university degree, making fun of my not having graduated college; mocked me like having had jobs and stuff; though by their fruits ye shall know them…grapes of thorns, figs of thistles? So Rose, seriously whatever.

My link alert, which is not super timely, and a friend in Humboldt who doesn’t really monitor watchpaul.org regularly, directed me over to Rose’s site Wednesday night, Dec 7.  I wrote what I thought was a very nice response, somewhat belatedly, but still…

Hi Rose. Posts on FDL close automatically after 48 hours; nothing cowardly about it, simply a way to prevent spammers and bots. Sorry you missed the window, but thanks for the linkage!

I find your views intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter. You can read more of my despicable propaganda at http://lafiga.firedoglake.com.

which showed up after a mere three minutes.

And I posted about all of this on my Facebook page which got a lot of comments.  I thought in light of the current kerfuffle over anonymous/Anonymous, DDoS, WikiLeaks and Assange it would be timely on Thursday day to use Rose’s anonymous poster to illustrate a point about online anonymity.

Rose had posted the two following remarks after 9pm Wednesday night:

Rose said…

Lisa Derrick, You’re a tool. You got used here. You don’t know jack about the subject. You do your readers and yourself a disservice.

If this article is any indication of the accuracy of your writing, you ought to find another profession.

Did they pay you?

12/08/2010 9:08 PM

A few minutes later,

Rose said…

Tell you what, Lisa – open up your comments on that post. I’ll post the real facts. Then your readers can actually get a fair honest picture and make up their own minds – maybe they’ll prefer the fairy tale. But at least they’ll know the Emperor isn’t wearing any fine robes. Whaddya say?
12/08/2010 9:22 PM

Assange and personal commitments kept me away from watchpaul.org until Thursday night, December 9 when I responded between 6 and 7 pm, politely saying that again comments close automatically, but that I had made sure that people were getting directed to her blog as it is important to gain a variety of perspectives.

And then I asked her to define the “they” to whom she was referring. Because I’d love to know.

You’d think cooking foil companies would be subsidizing some bloggers–all that hat making!

My most recent response to Rose hasn’t shown up yet as of 12:27 am Saturday, nor have those responses from people who wrote me Wednesday and Thursday letting me know they have sent Rose their own views.

It strikes me that if one is going to moderate comments–especially after making an queried accusation of a sordid, scurrilous, damaging and  wrong nature–one should be monitoring and moderating comments for replies.

And if one is going to allow anonymous (yet accurate, though caged as a derogatory slam) remarks about a subject’s sexual behavior, one should allow for equally as rapid replies from those who use their names, pseudonyms and Anonymous covering.

Otherwise the blog in question just seems like despicable propaganda. But hey, it’s the holiday season and I’m sure Rose is really busy getting her picket signs ready for the AntiWin rally outside the Gallegos victory party.

Oh and Anonymous #1  of watchpaul.org: You’ll never have the pleasure.

For the record: No one I have ever written about has paid me to write about about them and junkets, tee shirts, meals, etc. don’t sway me. I did once write a piece about U2, Negativland, Fair Use and copyright. A while later I was paid before it was repurposed into a press release; the essay has also been excerpted elsewhere without recompense.

UPDATE

WHACKAMOLE!

TWITTER SITE  http://twitter.com/#!/anonops

ANONOPS.NET however is having some issues at this writing. Like a huge Ooops!

***

They’re baaaaaack! Jest spelled diffurntly

Anon Operation

@Anon_Operationn The Internet

Operation:Payback is an ongoing campaign by Anonymous against major anti-piracy & anti-freedom entities. Join our IRC: irc://irc.anonops.net/operationpayback

http://www.anonops.net/

http://twitter.com/#!/Anon_Operationn

Twitter and Anonymous butthurt is more about not getting props on the trending list. The original Anon_Operation’s page got yanked cuz someone posted link to a Bad Thing. Here’s Twitter’s statement from NYTimes:

Twitter is not censoring #wikileaks, #cablegate or other related terms from the Trends list of trending topicsOur Trends list is designed to help people discover the ’most breaking’ breaking news from across the world, in real-time. The list is generated by an algorithm that identifies topics that are being talked about more right now than they were previously.

Twitter yanked Anon-Operations page. And Facebook just took down Operation Payback’s FB page. Ooops.

And now Sarah Palin who was really like mean and stuff about Julian Assange is claiming to have gotten a nice hard and fast DDoS on her PAC’s page. Oh and the Bad Peepul accessed her personal credit card info (though how that could have happened via SarahPAC is mystery…). The attention whore‘s email is kinda desperate and I suspect she was  third-partied.  No one at Wikileaks is stoopid enough to use “wikileaks.org” server for a DDoS like she claimed an email. Uh NO.

You maroons. Wikileaks.org has been offline for days now. It can’t be accessed. It is in a coma. (Like a few major sites soon). Nothing can be sent from or to it. It’s possible that “wikileaks.org” was in the reference headers, so the “tech aides” at SarahPac would catch a half-clue. Or maybe there is some sorta of Supah Spai spoofing technology. Not.

And now there’s Operation Bank Troll. Just shop with cash. Verified.Visa.com is down.

[ht: zerohedge.com]