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The Pirate Party: Are they Indeed the “Cyber-Wandervogel”?

Posted by Dave Emory ⋅ April 27, 2012Post a comment Email This Post Email This Post Print This Post Print This Post
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COMMENT: In FTR #‘s 732, 745, we took a look at the Pirate Bay/Pirate Par­ty milieu, an “anarcho/Utopian” net­work of (most­ly youth­ful) ide­al­ists that coa­lesced around the con­cept of Inter­net free­dom and file shar­ing. In those pro­grams, we also high­light­ed that milieu’s host­ing of, and sup­port for, the Wik­iLeaks net­work and oper­a­tion. Far from being the free­dom-lov­ing, demo­c­ra­t­ic mind­ed enti­ty that the Pirate folks and the over­lap­ping “Anony­mous” hack­tivist net­work imag­ined it to be, Wik­iLeaks is actu­al­ly a far-right, Nazi and intel­li­gence-linked oper­a­tion.

The above-ref­er­enced pro­grams doc­u­ment these con­nec­tions.

Two say­ings come to mind in this con­text, in which we see folks (Pirate milieu/Anonymous) who oppose fas­cism effec­tive­ly col­lab­o­rat­ing with, and sup­port­ing, a net­work man­i­fest­ing Scan­di­na­vian fas­cism and anti-Semi­tism. “Count your but­tons before doing them up” and “Fol­low the mon­ey” con­sti­tute wis­dom that the Pirate/Anonymous crowd would do well to fol­low.

There are a num­ber of con­sid­er­a­tions that come to mind here:

  • The arti­cle below notes that the Pirate Par­ty could threat­en Merkel’s coali­tion gov­ern­ment, if their pro­ject­ed elec­toral strength is real­ized. Pre­cise­ly what impli­ca­tions that might have for the “aus­ter­i­ty pol­i­cy” of Merkel’s gov­ern­ment vis a vis the EU remains to be seen, if such an even­tu­al­i­ty tran­spires. Note that the Merkel aus­ter­i­ty pro­gram, as we have seen, is a delib­er­ate gam­bit for the sub­ju­ga­tion and eco­nom­ic col­o­niza­tion of Europe.
  • Although there is much in the Pirate Par­ty plat­form with which we agree, much of it is also ide­al­is­tic to the point of imprac­ti­cal­i­ty. It’d be nice if there weren’t ter­ror­ists of var­i­ous stripes–neo-Nazis, Islam­o­fas­cists and others–but unfor­tu­nate­ly there are and soci­ety MUST guard against them. Incest isn’t cool, regard­less of what the Pirate Par­ty thinks. The Pirate/Anonymous/WikiLeaks milieu has run inter­fer­ence for kid­dieporn sites in the past. That isn’t cool either.
  • It is evi­dent from the arti­cle below that the Pirate Par­ty folks are aware, to an extent, that they have a Nazi prob­lem. (In the past, we’ve not­ed that neo-Nazis were infil­trat­ing that par­ty.) It remains to be seen if they can over­come that prob­lem. As not­ed by Har­mut Semken, head of the par­ty’s Berlin chap­ter, when a par­ty bars dis­crim­i­na­to­ry actions and state­ments against immi­grants and Mus­lims but per­mits anti-Semit­ic rhetoric under the rubric of free speech, it embod­ies a seri­ous con­tra­dic­tion.
  • If the past is any guide, there is not much cause for opti­mism. Their oppo­si­tion to fas­cism notwith­stand­ing, the Pirate/Anonymous milieu were tak­en for a long and VERY effec­tive ride by Pirate Bay’s fas­cist mon­ey­man Carl Lund­strom and Julian Assange and his Nazi/antisemitic assoc­ciates Joran Jer­mas and Johannes Wahlstrom.
  • One won­ders if the Pirate Par­ty folks will, indeed, become the new “Cyber-Wan­der­vo­gel.”
  • Who were the Wan­der­vo­gel? Let’s reprise an excerpt from FTR #‘s 732, 629: “ . . . The chief vehi­cle for car­ry­ing this ide­o­log­i­cal con­stel­la­tion to promi­nence was the youth move­ment, an amor­phous phe­nom­e­non which played a deci­sive but high­ly ambiva­lent role in shap­ing Ger­man pop­u­lar cul­ture dur­ing the first three tumul­tuous decades of the [20th] cen­tu­ry. Also known as the Wan­der­vo­gel, (which trans­lates rough­ly as ‘wan­der­ing free spir­its’), the youth move­ment was a hodge-podge of counter-cul­tur­al ele­ments, blend­ing neo-Roman­ti­cism, East­ern philoso­phies, nature mys­ti­cism, hos­til­i­ty to rea­son, and a strong com­mu­nal impulse in a con­fused but no less ardent search for authen­tic, non-alien­at­ed social rela­tions. Their back-to-the-land empha­sis spurred a pas­sion­ate sen­si­tiv­i­ty to the nat­ur­al world and the dam­age it suf­fered. They have been accu­rate­ly char­ac­ter­ized as ‘right-wing hip­pies,’ for although some sec­tors of the move­ment grav­i­tat­ed toward var­i­ous forms of eman­ci­pa­to­ry pol­i­tics (though usu­al­ly shed­ding their envi­ron­men­tal trap­pings in the process), most of the Wan­der­vo­gel were even­tu­al­ly absorbed by the Nazis. This shift from nature wor­ship to fuhrer wor­ship is worth exam­in­ing. . . .” (Eco­fas­cism: Lessons from the Ger­man Expe­ri­ence; by Janet Biehl and Peter Stau­den­maier; AK Press [SC] 1995; Copy­right 1995 by Janet Biehl and Peter Stau­den­maier; ISBN 1–873176-73–2; pp. 9–10.)
  • In the con­text of the deci­sion by Bavaria to repub­lish Mein Kampf, we might well ask if the Pirate Party/“Cyber-Wandervogel” milieu might be seduced by Hitler’s man­i­festo. (Bavari­a’s CSU is the right-wing pole of Merkel’s CDU/CSU par­ty).
  • The pre­vi­ous point might be con­sid­ered in light of a very thought­ful com­ment by “Suchi­ibu” on the Mein Kampf post. “The human mind runs on a dual brain sys­tem, and books like “Mein Kampf” appeal to the emo­tional side. Putting this book in young people’s hands and pro­mot­ing log­i­cal argu­ments about the book’s mes­sage is like tak­ing young men to a strip club and pro­mot­ing log­i­cal argu­ments about sex­ual ethics and moral­ity. Con­tin­u­ing dis­cus­sion about why we reject its hate­mon­ger­ing is the only way to counter that hate­mon­ger­ing. But it makes no sense to pub­lish new copies of it ‘for edu­ca­tional pur­poses’ than it does to include raw manure sam­ples in organ­ic chem­istry text­books ‘for edu­ca­tional pur­pos­es’.”
  • We should also note that the Pirate Par­ty has branch­es in oth­er Euro­pean coun­tries, and could become a “Cyber-Wan­der­vo­gel” pres­ence else­where in Europe.

 

“Will the Pirates Cap­ture Ger­many? by Peter Mar­ti­no; The Gate­stone Insti­tute; 4/24/2012.

EXCERPT: The cri­sis sur­round­ing the euro is lead­ing to grow­ing dis­sat­is­fac­tion with exist­ing par­ties all over the euro­zone. In France, as explained here last week, the cur­rent cri­sis has breathed new life into the far left. In Ger­many, where the far-left Die Linke par­ty is the suc­ces­sor of the Com­mu­nist Par­ty of East-Ger­many, an alto­geth­er new par­ty has emerged: the Piraten­partei, the Pirates’ Par­ty.

“I rec­og­nize we have a Nazi prob­lem in the Pirates,” Har­mut Semken, the head of the Berlin PP said. “There’s no alter­na­tive: a par­ty which accepts mem­bers with­out any pre-screen­ing can’t help but attract peo­ple try­ing to hide their con­tempt for human­i­ty behind free­dom of expres­sion,” he added. It is, how­ev­er, a strange posi­tion for a par­ty not to allow any crit­i­cism of immi­gra­tion and reli­gions, such as Islam, while at the same time con­don­ing anti-Semit­ic activ­i­ties under the pre­text of free­dom of expres­sion.

The Pirate move­ment, which orig­i­nat­ed in Swe­den in 2006, began as a loose­ly orga­nized group of dig­i­tal activists whose main aim is the free shar­ing of infor­ma­tion online, includ­ing through less strin­gent copy­right laws. Their polit­i­cal activ­i­ties began with protest­ing the raid of the Swedish police on the Stock­holm servers of the web­site The Pirate Bay, where music and movies could be down­loaded ille­gal­ly. In 2009, the Swedish Pirat­par­ti­et won 7.1 per­cent of the votes and two of Swe­den’s 20 seats in the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment. In the EP, the Pirates belong to the Green Group, led by the Fran­co-Ger­man for­mer rev­o­lu­tion­ary Daniel Cohn-Ben­dit. Fol­low­ing the Swedish exam­ple, PPs were estab­lished in some 40 coun­tries, but none has had the elec­toral impact of the Ger­man branch. . . .

. . . . May 6 is D‑day for the Euro­pean Union: there will be three elec­tions then. That day the French will elect their new pres­i­dent. If Nico­las Sarkozy los­es, the EU’s com­mon cur­ren­cy, the euro, will lose one of its staunchest sup­port­ers. There will also be gen­er­al elec­tions in Greece. These will prob­a­bly be won by oppo­si­tion par­ties reject­ing the EU imposed aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures. With­out these mea­sures, Greece will not be able to remain in the euro­zone and the euro will begin to unrav­el. There will also be state elec­tions in the Ger­man state of Schleswig-Hol­stein, prob­a­bly mark­ing anoth­er step in the Pirates’ march on Berlin.

Opin­ion polls pre­dict that Ger­many’s PP might win over 10 per­cent of the votes in next year’s gen­er­al elec­tions. In the 2009 Euro­pean elec­tions, the par­ty won only 0.9 per­cent of the votes. In the Sep­tem­ber 2011 Berlin state elec­tions, how­ev­er, it won 8.9 per­cent and in last March’s Saar­land state elec­tions it won 7.4 per­cent. The Pirates are also expect­ed to do well in two impor­tant state elec­tions in ear­ly May: May 6 in the north­ern state of Schleswig-Hol­stein, and May 13 in Ger­many’s most pop­u­lous state, North Rhine-West­phalia (NRW).

The Pirates’ advance is caus­ing a seri­ous headache for Ger­man Chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel. Dur­ing the past two years, Merkel and Sarkozy formed the tan­dem uphold­ing the euro. If Sarkozy is beat­en and the Pirates’ appeal keeps grow­ing, Merkel seems bound to lose next year’s Bun­destag elec­tions. . . .

Discussion

14 comments for “The Pirate Party: Are they Indeed the “Cyber-Wandervogel”?”

  1. “I rec­og­nize we have a Nazi prob­lem in the Pirates,” Har­mut Semken, the head of the Berlin PP said.

    OK, that sounds right from the horse’s mouth.

    Posted by Vanfield | April 29, 2012, 4:50 pm

  2. Well, the UK just pulled anoth­er police-state genie out of the bot­tle in order to stop the Pirate Bay. A High Court rul­ing is now requir­ing ISPs to block users from access­ing the Pirate Bay to pre­vent copy­right vio­la­tions. This should be a fun ride down the inter­net-cen­sor­ship slide. And on top of the civ­il lib­er­ties threat from ISPs being forced to block con­tent over copy­right vio­la­tions (that could be used to effec­tive­ly kill online polit­i­cal dis­course in the future...it’s hard to dis­cuss the news when you can’t exceprt it), now we have a polit­i­cal par­ty with an admit­ted “nazi prob­lem” get­ting to play the role of the polit­i­cal “good guys” amongst the clue­less youth that want their free down­loads. You have to won­der if Carl Lund­strom is hav­ing a “mis­sion accom­plished” moment right now.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | April 30, 2012, 11:35 am

  3. [...] The Pirate Par­ty: Are they Indeed the “Cyber-Wan­der­vo­gel”? [...]

    Posted by Miscellaneous articles for – Articles divers pour 04-30-2012 | Lys-d'Or | April 30, 2012, 11:36 am

  4. Accord­ing to this arti­cle, the Pirate Par­ty of Ger­many pri­mar­i­ly draws younger left-lean­ing vot­ers and is most­ly a threat to the SPD and Greens. Such a mov­ment could end up being a net pos­i­tive force for the Ger­man left wing par­ties if the Pirate Par­ty was will­ing to form a coali­tion. BUT, of course, the Pirate Par­ty has declared it has no inter­est in coali­tion pol­i­tics. Instead, it’s just going to be a protest par­ty on its own. That’s pret­ty con­ve­nient...for Merkel:

    Pirates Par­ty’s rapid rise upsets Ger­man land­scape
    Sarah Marsh and Hans-Edzard Buse­mann
    Reuters

    3:09 a.m. CDT, April 30, 2012

    NEUMUENSTER, Ger­many (Reuters) — With some sport­ing pirate garb and black beards in light-heart­ed trib­ute to their name, Ger­many’s Pirates par­ty gath­ered in a small city hall and in the vast open waters of cyber­space this week­end to chart a course that may yet take them to the nation­al par­lia­ment.

    The par­ty, which met in the north­ern city of Neu­muen­ster, aroused a mix­ture of wry amuse­ment and angry deri­sion when it stormed onto the polit­i­cal scene last year gar­ner­ing 8.9 per­cent of vote in Berlin’s city assem­bly. Since then, how­ev­er, it has staked a claim to third place in the par­ty peck­ing order, gar­ner­ing 11 to 13 per­cent in opin­ion polls.

    Even Chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel, not one to indulge the friv­o­lous, must take them seri­ous­ly. Her chances of win­ning a third term at 2013 fed­er­al polls are ris­ing because the Pirates’ surge from nowhere makes it less like­ly that the cen­tre-left Social Democ­rats (SPD) and Greens can form a major­i­ty.

    The Pirates are draw­ing sup­port from all par­ties, but par­tic­u­lar­ly from the left. Thanks to their spir­it­ed anti-estab­lish­ment atti­tude they are also attract­ing many new vot­ers who in the past stayed away from the polls on elec­tion day.

    “We were young and we were small, but we have already made his­to­ry,” said 24-year old Mari­na Weis­band, a Pirates leader, in a speech open­ing a two-day con­gress where suits were few and far between but bot­tles of high caf­feine soft drinks and bags of sweets lit­tered the tables.

    “We believe that peo­ple have to be con­nect­ed because the best ideas stem from a net­work,” she added.

    ...

    The Pirates fol­lowed up their Berlin suc­cess by enter­ing a sec­ond region­al par­lia­ment in March in Saar­land. They stand to enter two more of the 16 state assem­blies in the next two weeks, and mem­ber­ship has more than dou­bled in a year to around 28,600.

    The Pirates are polling at 9 per­cent in the two regions which hold May state elec­tions, set­ting them on track to get the 5 per­cent need­ed to enter the fed­er­al par­lia­ment in next year’s nation­al elec­tion. They do not want to form a coali­tion with any par­ty and aim to be only an oppo­si­tion par­ty for now.

    The Pirates, who adopt­ed their name on being accused of pira­cy over a fond­ness for down­load­ing copy­right­ed infor­ma­tion and mate­r­i­al from the inter­net, have tapped into a rich vein of vot­er dis­con­tent over estab­lished par­ties — the SPD, Merkel’s Chris­t­ian Democ­rats (CDU) and the Free Democ­rats (FDP) — who have dom­i­nat­ed pol­i­tics in vary­ing coali­tions, for six decades.

    ...

    Detrac­tors say this out­sider sta­tus could also make them appeal to those who might oth­er­wise vote for rad­i­cal par­ties. Con­tro­ver­sy erupt­ed recent­ly when two mem­bers were out­ed as for­mer­ly belong­ing to the far-right NPD.

    Much is at stake. If the Pirates’ suc­cess endures, it could fun­da­men­tal­ly change the polit­i­cal land­scape, frag­ment­ing it and mak­ing it more prob­lem­at­ic for the estab­lished par­ties to form majori­ties. They could also change the way par­ties do pol­i­tics.

    But if the Pirates implode, it could give the cen­tre-left oppo­si­tion a boost, and threat­en Merkel’s re-elec­tion, as a key con­ser­v­a­tive aid acknowl­edged to Reuters last week.

    ...

    YOUNG AND HIP

    As a result of their ori­gins in the Inter­net scene, the Pirates are over­whelm­ing­ly male, polit­i­cal­ly inex­pe­ri­enced and young, but the aver­age age has risen to 37 from around 30.

    Poll­sters say the Pirates have usurped the Greens as the coun­try’s young and hip alter­na­tive to the musty main­stream.

    “I don’t feel well rep­re­sent­ed by old­er peo­ple from par­ties that have become well-estab­lished,” said Bian­ca Staub­itz, 27, a med­ical stu­dent. “The Greens are now also estab­lished, they have adapt­ed to the sys­tem since they were in gov­ern­ment.”

    ...

    “We are roman­tics; for car­ing agri­cul­ture instead of indus­tri­al mass pro­duc­tion,” reads the slo­gan plas­tered on an image of sheep mat­ing on a lime green back­ground.

    SUPPORT FOR MERKEL

    The sud­den emer­gence of the Pirates and surge in sup­port for them is unri­valled in post-war his­to­ry, say poll­sters.

    Merkel’s strug­gling FDP junior coali­tion allies spent much of their par­ty con­fer­ence last week­end attack­ing the Pirates for being at best mere­ly “a par­ty with inter­net con­nec­tion” and no poli­cies, and at worst, akin to Soma­li Pirates rob­bing oth­er peo­ple of their prop­er­ty.

    The FDP, a small par­ty but so often the third-placed king­mak­er, is reel­ing from a string of elec­tion defeats and more lost sup­port could spell doom for them.

    But the Pirates present a greater threat to the cen­tre-left SPD and the Greens giv­en their cam­paign for a basic income and for greater demo­c­ra­t­ic par­tic­i­pa­tion.

    ...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | April 30, 2012, 6:35 pm

  5. id have to say that its clear they are cap­i­tal­iz­ing on the ‘indus­tries’ inabil­i­ty to change with our ever chang­ing cul­ture

    “The UK is not the first coun­try in Europe where the Pirate Bay is blocked by court order. Sim­i­lar ver­dicts were already hand­ed down in Italy, The Nether­lands, Den­mark, Bel­gium and Fin­land pre­vi­ous­ly.”

    needs a bit more look­ing into

    http://torrentfreak.com/uk-isps-must-censor-the-pirates-bay-high-court-rules-120430/

    good call Dave on the Cyber-Wan­der­vo­gel

    “Ear­li­er this year the site rolled out a new pro­mo­tion plat­form for film­mak­ers, musi­cians, writ­ers and all oth­er artists alike. To help them reach an audi­ence of tens of mil­lions of peo­ple, The Pirate Bay start­ed offer­ing the artists a prime adver­tis­ing spot on the site’s home­page, replac­ing the icon­ic logo.”
    http://torrentfreak.com/5000-artists-line-up-for-a-pirate-bay-promotion-120405/

    it seems to be going on in the US also, this con­ser­v­a­tive sub­ju­ga­tion of the left ide­ol­o­gy
    http://www.theamericanconservative.com/article/2003/aug/11/00019/

    Dave you clear­ly make some good points, as for instance i am all in sup­port of inter­net pri­va­cy and projects like Tor,open source and so on, GNU, etc.

    “The Pirate/Anonymous/WikiLeaks milieu has run inter­fer­ence for kid­dieporn sites in the past. That isn’t cool either.”

    the more i look into this the more it appears to me that these folks seem to be doing more harm than good against open­ing up free speech and Democ­ra­cy and the access to infor­ma­tion.

    Posted by Leif | May 1, 2012, 7:32 am

  6. @Pterrafractyl: Betcha Lund­strom would­n’t be as hap­py if the Pirates man­aged to start cleans­ing the neo-Nazis out of power.........although I’m not too ter­ri­bly opti­mistic; there are, unfor­tu­nate­ly, some pret­ty stu­pid peo­ple out there that’ll auto­mat­i­cal­ly sup­port any­thing that they think will ben­e­fit them some­how, regard­less of who’s doing it or why; after all, that’s how laws like Jim Crow got passed and how George Wal­lace was able to make a real show­ing in the ’68 elections.....on the oth­er hand, though, it’s impor­tant to remem­ber that the vast major­i­ty of peo­ple in the file-shar­ing com­mu­ni­ty, as Dave has right­ly point­ed out, are def­i­nite­ly any­thing but fas­cist, and I would like to add that some of them are prob­a­bly well aware of at least some of the polit­i­cal real­i­ties that do exist.

    What we real­ly need to do is try to wake up as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble. One thing I would sug­gest, is that we start down­load­ing some of Dav­e’s stuff(if we haven’t already), and putting the pro­grams into Tor­rents so they can be spread far and wide. It’s per­fect­ly legal and won’t cost you, me, or any­body, a cent!

    Posted by Steven L. | May 1, 2012, 8:06 am

  7. And with the May Day OWS protests planned across the US — right on cue — we have five anar­chists that were caught plan­ning a May Day bomb­ing of a Cleve­land bridge. This was after months of track­ing and assis­tance by a paid FBI infor­mant. They were also try­ing to gin up sup­port for vio­lent acts at an ear­li­er Occu­py Cleve­land protest but could­n’t find any tak­ers. It’s always nice when use­ful idio­cy proves to be unin­fec­tious.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | May 1, 2012, 12:53 pm

  8. “The blocks – to be imple­ment­ed by Sky, Every­thing Every­where, Talk­Talk, O2 and Vir­gin Media (BT are still con­sid­er­ing their posi­tion) – are designed to cut off all but the most deter­mined file-shar­ers from the world’s most pop­u­lar tor­rent site.

    On hear­ing the news a Pirate Bay insid­er told Tor­rent­F­reak that the mea­sure will do very lit­tle to stop peo­ple access­ing the site and pre­dict­ed that “the free adver­tis­ing” would only increase traf­fic lev­els.

    It’s not pos­si­ble to buy adver­tis­ing “arti­cles” from lead­ing UK pub­li­ca­tions such as the BBC, Guardian and Tele­graph, but yes­ter­day The Pirate Bay news was spread across all of them and dozens beside, for free. The news was repeat­ed around the UK, across Europe and around the world reach­ing mil­lions of peo­ple. The results for the site were dra­mat­ic.

    “Thanks to the High Court and the fact that the news was on the BBC, we had 12 MILLION more vis­i­tors yes­ter­day than we had ever had before,” a Pirate Bay insid­er informed Tor­rent­F­reak today.

    “We should write a thank you note to the BPI,” he added.

    The block­ade, which was not con­test­ed by any of the ISPs list­ed above, will be imple­ment­ed dur­ing the course of the next few weeks. While that time counts down, The Pirate Bay say they are view­ing the inter­im peri­od as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to edu­cate site vis­i­tors on how to deal with cen­sor­ship by bypass­ing it.

    “Anoth­er thing that’s good with the traf­fic surge is that we now have time to teach even more peo­ple how to cir­cum­vent Inter­net cen­sor­ship,” the insid­er added.

    In court papers released today, Mr Jus­tice Arnold said that since the terms of the court order (how the blocks would be imple­ment­ed tech­ni­cal­ly) had been agreed to by the ISPs in ques­tion, there was no need for him to detail them in his rul­ing. How­ev­er, The Pirate Bay told us that by tak­ing a range of mea­sures, any block­ing tech­nique employed by any ISP can be over­come.”
    http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-enjoys-12-million-traffic-boost-shares-unblocking-tips-120502/

    @Steven L ya I have seen some of Dav­es work in tor­rents although Ive nev­er used TPB

    Posted by Leif | May 3, 2012, 6:25 am

  9. @Leif: Inter­est­ing news, thanks. I myself have tried to tell peo­ple that ISP block­ing won’t work if you tru­ly are that deter­mined to down­load stuff and know how get around it. Just like cannabis; if you know the right deal­ers and know how to stay con­spic­u­ous, you aren’t like­ly to get caught.

    Some­how, though, I won­der if TPB will even­tu­al­ly end up in trou­ble again. Lund­strom has real­ly been noth­ing but bad news for these guys, real­ly.

    Posted by Steven L. | May 4, 2012, 11:23 am

  10. recent Ger­man elec­tion
    “The big win­ners on the night were the Pirates, an upstart par­ty that has shak­en up the staid world of Ger­man pol­i­tics with a cam­paign based on more trans­paren­cy in the polit­i­cal process and inter­net free­dom.”

    http://www.thelocal.de/politics/20120506–42381.html

    India blocks TPB
    “Con­tin­u­ing a recent trend, The Pirate Bay and oth­er large Bit­Tor­rent sites are now being blocked by Inter­net providers in India. Vis­i­tors who try to access the sites are redi­rect­ed to a ban­ner which informs them that the Depart­ment of Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ordered a black­out. Tor­rent sites are not the only tar­get, as the block­ade also cen­sors the video shar­ing site Vimeo, one of the largest com­mu­ni­ties of indie film­mak­ers.”
    http://torrentfreak.com/india-orders-blackout-of-vimeo-the-pirate-bay-and-more-120504/

    Posted by leif | May 6, 2012, 11:45 am

  11. TPB makes this announce­ment to anony­mous
    “Seems like some ran­dom Anony­mous groups have run a DDOS cam­paign against Vir­gin media and some oth­er sites.
    We’d like to be clear about our view on this:

    We do NOT encour­age these actions. We believe in the open and free inter­nets, where any­one can express their views. Even if we strong­ly dis­agree with them and even if they hate us.

    So don’t fight them using their ugly meth­ods. DDOS and blocks are both forms of cen­sor­ship.

    If you want to help; start a track­er, arrange a man­i­fes­ta­tion, join or start a pirate par­ty, teach your friends the art of bit­tor­rent, set up a proxy, write your polit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tives, devel­op a new p2p pro­to­col, print some pro pira­cy posters and dec­o­rate your town with, sup­port our pro­mo bay artists or just be a nice per­son and give your mom a call to tell her you love her.”

    https://www.facebook.com/ThePirateBayWarMachine/posts/261478760616422

    Posted by leif | May 11, 2012, 9:03 am

  12. Pirate Bay SIEMENS link.

    “Peter Sunde worked for Siemens in Nor­way with data man­age­ment in con­nec­tion with the X‑ray machines...he began to show inter­est in the pirate move­ment, and became active in Pirat­byrån and The Pirate Bay. Sunde was then The Pirate Bay’s face.”

    Looks like he was recruit­ed by Ger­man Intel­li­gence at Siemens.

    http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=no&u=http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Sunde&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dsiemens%2Bpirate%2Bbay%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26tbo%3Dd%26biw%3D1366%26bih%3D673&sa=X&ei=l0utUJ27BqOu0QXS4IDgBQ&ved=0CEgQ7gEwBA

    Posted by GW | November 21, 2012, 1:50 pm

  13. @GW–Good find!

    Do note that Ger­many Watch is now feed­ing along the front page of my web­site, between german-foreign-policy.com and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Dai­ly Report!

    Best,

    Dave

    Posted by Dave Emory | November 21, 2012, 4:06 pm

  14. Thanks Dave, hope from time to time we come up with the goods!

    Posted by GW | November 22, 2012, 12:56 pm

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