Pirates Forever!

Yo ho
All Together
Hoist the colors high!

Heave Ho
Thieves and Beggars
Never shall we die!

Acting against ACTA

ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, is ostensibly supposed to cut down on illegal pirating of copyrighted materials. It's full of ridiculous baggage and demands, but the most alarming provision is the "three strikes and you're out" rule, where if someone is accused (not convicted) of three or more acts of copyright infringement, the international body can have that person banned from the internet for life.

That's pretty sick. I don't think I could live without the internet. Admittedly, it'd make me slightly more productive, but a lot more isolated and miserable in the process.

Read more at www.anti-acta.com. The most level-headed report I've read on it was here. He makes it sound a little less dire, but is still rightly concerned about it.

ACTA has been worked on, largely in secret (but with several big leaks), for the past two or three years, and unless people speak up against it on a large scale, it's likely to be completed and signed in the remaining months of 2010.

Here's an amusing video on the subject, by someone who's very good at angry ranting:



This one's less amusing, and a bit calmer:


International protests are planned for Sept 18 and Nov 5.  There's a online petition to Stop ACTA. Annoying letters to various government personages  and media editors probably wouldn't hurt either, if you've got a few minutes to spare to help ensure the internet doesn't go away any time soon.

That's Cap'm Ron Paul to you, me mateys!

I thought Ron Paul was cool before he endorsed that bunch of hatemongering religious loonies who masquerade behind the name "The Constitution Party". Clearly, he was reading this blog, and has been working for months to try to find a new platform that would get us behind him.

Ron Paul: Bring back private pirate hunters with "letters of marque"
WASHINGTON – A congressman from Texas who's known for broadsides at U.S. foreign policy says Somali piracy has an age-old solution" - letters of marque" empowering private citizens to chase the criminals from the oceans.

Of course, he clearly doesn't really understand what Letters of Marque are all about. He thinks they're used by pirate hunters, when in reality they were used by pirates. It's piracy with a veneer of respectability that only matters when you go back to home waters. If France were at war with Spain, then France would issue civilian vessels letters saying "we won't consider it Piracy if you raid Spanish ships". Likewise, if the US issues letters vs Somalia, it'll mean US ships will start arming up, and sailing around Africa attacking any ship that "looked like a pirate" or sailed a Somali flag. If you start issuing such letters again, you'll be increasing, not decreasing, the number of individuals engaging in piratical behavior in the ocean.

But, since it would mean more opportunities to wear me dandy coat and little pants, I'd be a'for it. Maybe that's Ron Paul's angle on this as well. -->

Indians vs. Pirates: 23

Just a couple of my favorite things.

Indian navy 'captures 23 pirates'

The Indian navy says it has arrested 23 Somali and Yemeni pirates who tried to storm a ship in the Gulf of Aden.

23 pirates.

That is all.

Yar, the Ten Strip Goes Down the Hatch!

Thanks to clusterlizard for sharing. He figured it would fit with one of our favorite topics here at RE: Pirates!

And the song lets you know that it is fine if you want to drop some acid and watch. "Do what you want cuz a pirate is free. You are a pirate."



Some time ago I was shown another clip from this show. She said it was one of the freakiest things she had ever watched.



And this remix of clips put to another song is extremely disturbing.

Jolly Rogers

Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me! It be soundin' utopian, mateys.

Somali pirates living the high life

Most of them are aged between 20 and 35 years - in it for the money.

And the rewards they receive are rich in a country where almost half the population need food aid after 17 years of non-stop conflict.

Most vessels captured in the busy shipping lanes of the Gulf of Aden fetch on average a ransom of $2m.

This is why their hostages are well looked after.

The BBC's reporter in Puntland, Ahmed Mohamed Ali, says it also explains the tight operation the pirates run.

They are never seen fighting because the promise of money keeps them together.

Wounded pirates are seldom seen and our reporter says he has never heard of residents along Puntland's coast finding a body washed ashore.

Given Somalia's history of clan warfare, this is quite a feat.

But can it last? Can the love of money hold pirate clans together?

Only as long as the vast majority have little to nothing. A perfect example is piracy in the United States. Oil company executives should be bitter rivals. Instead they are part of a brotherhood of pirates that lives by their own little pirate code. Aye, we be gunnin em down and rapin em, but we be sharin the booty. And the pirates living the high life can act amicably towards each other as long as they are all part of the rich elite sailing on the seas of the corpses of the oppressed working class. Yo ho ho and a bottle of 100 year scotch!

Or maybe the Somali pirates have a killer public relations department.

I love me MP3s and me glasses.

Thought I'd just share this pirate ditty from Pirates R Us while I have a chance.



I'm stuck in training until the end of next week so you won't see much of me until after that. Anyway, I also got glasses and am amazed at the fact that road signs have words printed on them. Pfft! Who needs road signs when I have an Irishman on my dashboard to tell me where to go? But hey, combined with my graying temples they make me look distinguished.

Keeping Your Tanks Afloat

Why would a pirate want big readily sinkable russian tanks?

article marginally related to piracy, just for the sake of the meme

Gotta put my conspiratorial spin on this, since we all know I see conspiracy in everything...

So, what kind of tanks don't sink? Helium tanks, 'cause helium's lighter than water. And where do we find helium? In the LHC!

Clearly, there's a previously unrevealed connection linking french fire fighters to somalian pirates! First, they risked destroying us all by stealing the helium from the LHC (little did you know, helium has natural blackhole-supressing properties)... then they used it to make the T-72's float. Now they have a fleet of armored floating battlestations, to sail right up the rio grande into the American Heartland! There'll be this big battle involving pocket battleships (wow, that's stretching back 10 years and 2 websites ago) and... That that mother fucking slacker beat me to this story! So did both the other mother fucking slackers who've only ever had one haircut their whole adult lives. Fuck all 3 of them! I'm posting anyway.

Ruskies chase Blue Beard

Captain Bluebeard, a Russian Warship, and 33 T-72's walk into a bar, and Bluebeard says "I'm gonna get tanked!"

Russia sends warship after Somali pirates seize tank-laden vessel
MOGADISHU (AFP) — A Russian warship headed for the seas off Somalia Saturday after pirates seized a Ukrainian freighter carrying 33 tanks, munitions and other weaponry, officials said.

Crap. That that mother fucking slacker beat me to this story! So did the other mother fucking slacker, the one who's only ever had one haircut his whole adult life. (No, not me, the one with the mohawk.) Fuck them both! I'm posting anyway.




Image: Pirate Tanks.

Pirates!

Pirates seized a cargo ship loaded with weapons off the coast of Kenya

The vessel Faina, flying a Belize flag, was headed to the Kenyan port of Mombasa after departing from Nikolayev, Ukraine, according to Lt. Col. Konstantin Sadilov, spokesman for the defense ministry.

He said it was seized by pirates on Thursday not far from its destination.

According to the defense ministry, the ship was carrying 33 Soviet-made T-72 tanks, tank artillery shells, grenade launchers and small arms.

The tanks themselves may not be much use at sea, but the turrents would be very handy mounted on a pirate ship along with the grenade launchers and stuff. With that kind of arsenal you could clean out a cruise ship.

Slacker Uprising Tonight

Michael Moore is a controversial jack-ass with an oversized heart of gold. I think the world of him - he's a funny guy who stirs up a laugh riot while giving the establishment ulcers. He has a lot of courage, a good deal of wit, and my undying admiration. A lot of people hate him. If my anecdotal observations from trying to convince friends and relatives to watch him are the least bit accurate, I'd say most people who hate him (maybe even 90%) have never watched any of his films. They were told they'd hate it, so they avoided him. It's sadly easy in this country to be ignorant about how much the government and big corporations are trying to screw you over. And, if you've been told you might not like his work, why spend your hard earned cash just confirming that?

Moore's latest film, Slacker Uprising, goes live tonight, and it's available for free! It's a full-length film, something of a follow up to his award-winning Fahrenheit 9/11 mixed with a chronicle of Moore's political activities during the last election cycle. You can get the whole film (and the legal right to burn it, spread it, exhibit it, email it to your grandma, etc) from slackeruprising.com, where the downloading will begin at midnight tonight. Spread the word. Spread the film. Pass it around like the devious little pirate you are in your heart of hearts.

My Computer's In Dry-Dock

Yar. On Friday last, I got up at the booty of dawn ('tis less southerly, and more pleasant desirous than the dirty ol' buttcrack of dawn), hauled my piratical dictionary up'n from below-decks, and prepared to set match ta a volley of swarthy countenances that would clarly belabour both'n the cut of me jib an' the temper o' me steel. But'n, fer land's sakes, me ship just lingered there in port - the sails were mutinously refusing to unfurl. Eventually, wit' great personal effort and displeasure, I was able to make them unfurl, but even then they weren't but catchin' nary a wind. Instead of blowing out to sea, they just sat there making a gawd awful racket, like a three pence whore grindin' her holey teeth agin' the basket hilt of me cutlass.

In less flavorful terms, my computer died. I've spent nearly14 hours across the past 3 days trying every trick, system disk, and repair program I know. It won't even recognize that it has a hard-drive now. Crap.

I've got my wife's laptop to fall back on, but since she teleworks two days a week, my internet time will be a bit restricted in the near future. And since she just got her holey teeth filled (so as to not resemble a 3-pence whore), we lack the dubloons to get my 'puter's hull shored up this paycheck. It sits in drydock till some unforseen horizon, and I'm left to wrestle with a windows machine running a variety of microsoft products. Somebody'll be walkin' the plank fer that, I assurn ye.

In short, if'n yer expectin' this scurvy dog to entertain ya, or respond to any parchments stuffed in emailical bottles, yer outta luck.

Booty (NSFW)

This here may not be booty but it be booty!





Yar! Here be some more booty (NSFW) to be celebratin' the spirit of thar day.

Yo ho! Yo Ho! A Pirate's life for me.

Enron: The Smartest Conspirators In The Room

Yet another installment in my "conspiracies happen all the time" series. Last night my wife and I watched Enron: The Smartest Men In The Room, a shocking exposé of the depths to which corporate America will sink. Very disturbing, and well worth a couple hours of your time.

In a nutshell, here's the situation: The top executives at Enron conspired to get rich at the publics expense. Charges have been filed against around 16 people (5 convictions, 1 aquittal, and 10 or 11 awaiting trial at the time the film was made, IIRC. Not sure what the numbers have adjusted to since then). They cooked the books - they faked income and profit that the company wasn't making. They manipulated investors, analysts, banks and regulators to keep a company afloat for years on vapor and stock options. Dozens of 3rd parties were in the position to say "no" (and expected to do so because of their jobs as government servants) but failed to do so, even though the insider deals and conflicts of interest were obvious, and the book-keeping was virtually nonexistant. Instead, despite obvious red flags signaling that unethical and even illegal things were happening in those offices, numerous financial officials not only didn't investigate them, many took gifts from them and/or partnered with the company. When things started to get shaky, the top officers of the company sold their own shares of stock for hundreds of millions while publicly encouraging their employees to buy shares of the stock (because, supposedly, things had never looked better for the future of our company). In the end, thousands of people lost their jobs and their retirement savings, while a few dozen fat cats made millions upon millions.

But that's by no means the height of the conspiracy in this case. There's actual recorded phonecalls of Enron traders calling contacts they had at powerplants in California, and manufacturing the energy crisis that resulted in statewide rolling blackouts. Enron was in the business of trading energy. They would buy kilowatts, and transmit out of the state, then get the plants to shut down for trumped-up reasons so that they could sell the energy back to California at a massive profit. We're talking units of energy bought around $50, and then sold back at $1,000 a unit, inflated because the powerplants were shut down for no sane reason. It would seem that dozens of people were complicit in this scam, knowing full well that they were creating immense hardship for the people of California in the process.

Conspiracies happen. I assure you that right now, this very moment, somewhere in America, some group of people are currently plotting something illegal for their own benefit. We like to think that this is rare, and that most crimes are ill-conceived acts of passion committed by lone-nuts. The truth, however, is that people conspire to defraud, rob, and murder all the damn time. When a lot (of either money or power) stands to be gained by said conspirators, most people don't stand up and blow whistles - the sad truth is most people just take their bribe and look the other way.

CameraMan update

I've got two films (about a minute each) done. A third film (ironically, the first film) is about 3 minutes in length, and it requires some still-to-be-done ADR, 'cause I just lack the tech to scrub the audio enough. The delay is probably for the best, though - I want to give Josh at least a week to check his email and find my request to use some Loingroove tracks in the background. Though super-short, the films just needed a soundtrack, and I figured those guys were less likely to sue me than most record companies. If I don't hear back from him this week, I'll probably just take a chance and upload the films on Monday or Tuesday. Obviously, the films are too short to feature entire songs, so they shouldn't impact any future sales or videos on the part of the band. In the meantime, if anyone here is in contact with any of the former members of Loin Groove, please point them in my direction so I can beg and grovel for permission. Thanks!

Don't Breathe - Or Make Pyramids

The best reason against world government - arguably more immediately relevant than conspiratorial bankers - is that it would be government of the lowest common denominator. Stupidity is undeniable, no matter your stance on conspiracy.
Case in point: Check out this nonsense from Egypt:

Egypt to Copyright Pyramids
by Rayad Abou Awad

CAIRO (AFP) - In a potential blow to themed resorts from Vegas to Tokyo, Egypt is to pass a law requiring payment of royalties whenever its ancient monuments, from the pyramids to the sphinx, are reproduced.
...
"The new law will completely prohibit the duplication of historic Egyptian monuments..."
...
"If the law is passed then it will be applied in all countries of the world so that we can protect our interests," Hawass said.

Attempting to copyright something your ancestors built 5,000+ years ago is pretty ridiculous.

Later this afternoon, I shall be attempting to copyright Oxygen. It's made by plants, which I share a common microbial-soup ancestor with, if you look back far enough. From then on, all modern plants will owe me royalties or be guilty of infringing my process. In addition, if you humans want to breathe oxygen, you'll have to buy it from one of my authorized vendors. If you pirate any oxygen, my lawyers will sue you under international copyright law. I'm lookin' at you, Jake. See you in court!

Pirate Invasion

And in a continuation of events, today at work a gal was wearing a tank top sporting a Jolly Roger motif with the word 'PIRATES' printed on it.

And have I ever mentioned that of the two most serious injuries I have suffered, one could have resulted in the loss of an eye and the other the loss of my leg below the knee?

The Whole 9 Yaarghs!

Four 'Yars' anyway. The pirate meme just keeps going. After reccomending Pirates the porno, reminding everyone about International Talk Like a Pirate Day, and then announcing this weekend's Portland Pirate Festival, a coworker shows me her brand new tattoo. It was a Jolly Roger on the back of her neck with 'PIRATE' written under it.

Second Annual Portland Pirate Festival

Because the pirate meme is too much fun to give up just yet.

Explore tall ships, celebrate buccaneer music, and thrill to cannon and sword fighting demonstrations at Portland's newest family festival, under the St. John's Bridge in historic Cathedral Park.

But I'm not going unless I can pirate some tickets. I don't like to pay to attend 'family festivals'. Great list of food vendors, though. It includes Rogue Brewery makers of Dead Guy Ale, Salvador Mollys where I tried to commit suicide on my birthday last year by eating all five of their 'Great Balls of Fire' habanero cheese fritters, and... Pronto Pups?

For over 60 years Pronto Pups have been made at America's greatest Fairs and Amusement Parks. This is the same "Pronto Pup" that you'll get at places like Cedar Point Amusement Park in Sandusky, Ohio and at the Minnesota State Fair - just to name a few.

Yar! Thar be a mashed meat product in me corn bread on a stick.

Yarrgh!

Avast! I'll be keel-haulin' yer freedom o' speech an' pillage yer cheaper money! 'Cause that's what a blaggert do on a day like this! I'll be takin' all yer petticoats and knickers and unmentionables too wiles I'm at it. You'll be missin' those whilst you walk the plank, disgraceful bits danglin' in the cold ocean mist. Should be 'shamed a' yerselves talkin' real world polit'cal nonsense on the piratical day.


Unless... if'n ya be bloodthirsty shameless pirates, then I s'posed yer wouldn't be 'shamed a nothin. Shiver me timbers! Is that what manner of seadogs ye be? Shameless dogs!?!