This Christmas Eve more than 40 people gathered at the main gate to Victoria Park in London to protest the Olympic torch relay. Large banners were held up, free food was provided by ‘Food Not Games’, and speakers from several community groups chanted and delivered their message to the crowds as the torch was about to arrive for a celebration.

During this protest over 1000 flyers from the Olympic Resistance Network and no2010 were handed out to people as they arrived to see the torch. Several people stopped to learn more and some joined us, including a few ‘Torch Relay’ volunteers who put no2010 stickers over their name tags and started handing out our flyers instead of Coke branded Canadian flags.

After speaking out at the gate, folks marched into the park chanting ‘no olympics on stolen native land’. Police tried to block people from weaving their way through the crowds, but failed. After ‘welcoming’ the torch with boos and chants, people regrouped at the main gate.

‘Food not Games’ was a central message, and during the over-financed ‘celebration’ not a single free meal was given out in the entire city. Except ours. ‘Food not Games’ served a healthy holiday meal to anyone who thought free food was a better deal than an overpriced flame. Chants of ‘Food Not Games, Homes Not Games’ were heard clearly by the hundreds who left the ‘celebration’ midway through.

A roll of stickers was also distributed to hundreds of spectators, and stickers made their way onto numerous relay vehicles, infrastructure, and corporate propaganda and advertising while children spoke of the need for ‘education not games’ and mothers spoke of fighting for a future for the next generation.

Minus the ignorant patriots, classless classists, and preposterous police presence, it was a formidable family friendly protest.

Props to Oneida, Six Nations, Toronto, Kitchener, and all other communities resisting the 2010 Olympics across Ontario and throughout the world.

http://mostlywater.org/london_protests_olympic_torch

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The free culture movement is a social movement that promotes the freedom to distribute and modify creative works in the form of free content, using the internet as well as other media. The movement objects to overly restrictive copyright laws, or completely rejects the concepts of copyright and intellectual property, which many members of the movement argue also hinders creativity. They call this system “permission culture”.

The ideology of free culture and progressive copyright law were originally initiated as the protection of imaginative culture-producers from legal threats of corporations who did not allow employment of their art or commerce.
Today, the term stands for many other movements—hacker computing, the access-to-knowledge movement and “copy left” movement, etc.

Students for Free Culture, is an international student organization working to promote free culture ideals, such as cultural participation and access to information. It was inspired by the work of Stanford Law professor Lawrence Lessig, who wrote the book Free Culture, and it frequently collaborates with other prominent free culture NGOs, including Creative Commons, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Public Knowledge. Students for Free Culture has over 30 chapters on college campuses around the world, and a history of grassroots activism.

Freeganism is an anti-consumerist lifestyle whereby people employ alternative living strategies based on “limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources”. Freegans “embrace community, generosity, social concern, freedom, cooperation, and sharing in opposition to a society based on materialism, moral apathy, competition, conformity, and greed.^“ The lifestyle involves salvaging discarded, unspoiled food from supermarket dumpsters, known as dumpster diving. Freegans salvage the food for political reasons, rather than out of need.

For those that believe in Proudhon’s famous dictum “property is theft”, nowhere is such thievery as blatant and repugnant today as when applied to what is colloquially termed “intel­lectual property.” Truly, the commodification of information is an offense against the human spirit and, indeed, the very notion of Darwinian evolution itself.

In today’s society, information is an indispensable form of corporate capital. Protected by an insidious network of patents and copyrights and a near-monopoly on methods of research and development, corporations employ the best minds of our generation in order to glean comparative advantage from the fruits of their labour. Any new “ideas” – this term can apply to anything from a medical or techno­logical breakthrough to an Indy Rock album or an innovative marketing strategy – thus produced instantly become the “property” of the corporations that develop (or purchase) them. Instead of information being shared altruistically for the betterment of humanity as a whole, it is instead owned by corporations who go to great lengths to control which individuals can then have access to it – thereby ensuring that said access inevitably comes with a price tag attached. By doing this, corporations not only rob humanity of the immedi­ate practical benefits of the information, but also impede the process of further development that comes with a free exchange of ideas; where would we be right now if our ancestors had chosen to patent fire?

Dr. Fredrick Banting, after developing insulin as a life-saving means of treating diabetes, donated his discovery to the University of Toronto - thereby ensuring its continual, afford­able availability to all. Such charity is notably absent in the actions of today’s pharmaceutical giants, who would rather watch untold millions of Africans die from AIDS than share their recipes for life-saving retro-viral drugs. Corporations are not swayed by sentimental trappings such as empathy, compassion or decency - seeing these human weaknesses as nothing more than obstacles to profit.

And yet the means by which information is created and transmitted are changing.

With the advent of the Internet and the introduction of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) and Bit Torrent transfer technologies, we stand on the threshold of a communication revolution greater than anything seen since Guttenberg’s printing press. Our collective mental commons are being redrawn along more decentralized lines, while our corporate overlords struggle to adapt to the shifting realities of this strange new terrain.

New technologies will offer us the possibility to transform our society, currently configured as a system of passive information consumers, into a network of active information producers; may this be the Marxist dialectic of the digital age.

Together we must be vigilant. The current gatekeepers of knowledge – like the Catholic Church of Guttenberg’s era – will doubtless try to slow our society’s transformation. But like the Church before them, today’s corporations will fail… for the desire to communicate is inherent to the human spirit – and woe to those who seek to deny us our inalienable rights.

Ours is a consumer society that profits from disposability under the logic that the sooner things break the sooner they can be replaced. Production is artificially inflated through intentionally shoddy products while consumption is stimulated through commercial bombardment. Since the 1930s, manufacturers have been designing their products to be replaced frequently just as fashion designers keep us buying by making last year’s fashions look outdated. This is called planned obsolescence. I first heard about planned obsolescence from the excellent short film, The Story of Stuff.

“Planned obsolescence” may sound like a conspiracy theory but it was once openly discussed as a solution to the Great Depression. In fact, most scholars trace the origin of the term to Bernard London’s 1932 pamphlet, “Ending the Depression Through Planned Obsolescence”, in which London blames the global economic Depression on consumers who disobey “the law of obsolescence” by “using their old cars, their old tires, their old radios and their old clothing much longer than statisticians had expected”. London’s sinister solution was to propose a government agency that would determine the lifespan of each manufactured object whether it is a building, a ship, a comb or a shoe. Those frugal consumers who insisted on using their products past the expiration date would be penalized. London explained his plan simply: “I propose that when a person continues to posses and use old clothing, automobiles and buildings, after they have passed their obsolescence date, as determined at the time they were created, he should be taxed for such continued use of what is legally ‘dead’.” While the regulatory specifics of London’s plan may not have been put into place the spirit of his proposal has been adopted by product designers whose objects are meant to break.

And so we grow old in a world surrounded by things whose disposability is prized above all else. Of course, the need to constantly replace the objects in our daily life has an added benefit as well: it keeps us locked into our overworked, over stimulated and under paid daily grind. We work to buy things that are built to die so that we must work to buy more things that will break. A vicious cycle with two exits: the consumer’s debt ridden grave or the freedom of the culture jammer who refuses to replace the junk that breaks – the junk we never needed anyways.

I would have the Government assign a lease of life to shoes and homes and machines, to all products of manufacture, mining and agriculture, when they are first created, and they would be sold and used within the term of their existence definitely known by the consumer. After the allotted time had expired, these things would be legally “dead” and would be controlled by the duly appointed governmental agency and destroyed if there is widespread unemployment. New products would constantly be pouring forth from the factories and marketplaces, to take the place of the obsolete, and the wheels of industry would be kept going and employment regularized and assured for the masses. - Bernard London (1932)

We wish to change global legislation to facilitate the emerging information society, which is characterized by diversity and openness. We do this by requiring an increased level of respect for the citizens and their right to privacy, as well as reforms to copyright and patent law.

The three core beliefs of the Pirate Party are the need for protection of citizen’s rights, the will to free our culture,
and the insight that patents and private monopolies are damaging to society.

Ours is a control and surveillance society where practically everyone is registered and watched. It is counterproductive to a modern judicial state to impose surveillance on all its citizens, thereby treating them as suspects. Democracy pre-supposes a strong protection for citizen’s rights.

Copyright was created to benefit society in order to encourage acts of creation, development and spreading
of cultural expressions. In order to achieve these goals, we need a balance between common demands of availability and distribution on the one hand, and the demands of the creator to be recognized and remunerated on the other. We claim today’s copyright system unbalanced. A society where cultural expressions and knowledge are free for all on equal terms benefits the whole of the society. We claim that widespread and systematic abuses of today’s copyrights are actively counter-productive to these purposes by limiting both the creation of, and access to, cultural expressions.

Today’s copyright and patent laws lead to harmful monopolies, the loss of important democratic values, hinder the creation of culture and knowledge, and prevent them from reaching the citizens. We demand the abolishment of patents and fair and balanced laws of copyrights, rooted in the will of the people, to enrich people’s lives, enable a healthy business climate and create a knowledge and cultural commons, thereby benefiting the development of society as a whole.

Privatized monopolies are one of society’s worst enemies, as they lead to price-hikes and large hidden costs for citizens. Patents are officially sanctioned monopolies of ideas. Large corporations diligently race to hold patents they can use against smaller competitors to prevent them from competing on equal terms. A monopolistic goal is not to adjust prices and terms to what the market will bear, but rather use their ill-gotten rights as a lever to raise prices and set lopsided terms on usage and licensing. We want to limit the opportunities to create damaging and unnecessary monopoly situations.

Our work with this is now focused on parliamentary means and therefore we seek a mandate from the people to represent them on these issues.

The Pirate Party does not strive to be part of an administration. Our goal is to use a tie breaker position in parliament as leverage, and support an administration that drives the issues in our platform in a satisfactory manner. When they do, we will support that administration on other issues where we choose to not hold opinions of our own.

To unite as a strong movement, we have chosen to not take a stand in any political issues not connected with the principles declared herein.

We stand united around our protection of the right to privacy, our will to reform copyrights, and the need to abolish patents.

Free software is a matter of liberty, not price. To un­derstand the concept, you should think of free as in free speech, not as in free beer.

Free software is a matter of the users’ freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it means that the program’s users have four essential freedoms:

• The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).

• The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish (freedom 1).

• The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).

• The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements (and modified versions in general) to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3).

A program is free software if users have all of these freedoms. Thus, you should be free to redistribute cop­ies, either with or without modifications, either gratis or charging a fee for distribution, to anyone anywhere. Being free to do these things means (among other things) that you do not have to ask or pay for permission.

You should also have the freedom to make modifications and use them privately in your own work or play, without even mentioning that they exist. If you do publish your changes, you should not be required to notify anyone in particular, or in any particular way.

The freedom to run the program means the freedom for any kind of person or organization to use it on any kind of computer system, for any kind of overall job and purpose, without being required to communicate about it with the developer or any other specific entity. In this freedom, it is the user’s purpose that matters, not the developer’s purpose; you as a user are free to run a pro­gram for your purposes, and if you distribute it to some­one else, she is then free to run it for her purposes, but you are not entitled to impose your purposes on her.

In order for the freedoms to make changes, and to pub­lish improved versions, to be meaningful, you must have access to the source code of the program. Therefore, ac­cessibility of source code is a necessary condition for free software.

Freedom includes the freedom to use your changed ver­sion in place of the original. In order for these freedoms to be real, they must be permanent and irrevocable as long as you do nothing wrong; if the developer of the software has the power to revoke the license, or retro­actively change its terms, without your doing anything wrong to give cause, the software is not free.

However, certain kinds of rules about the manner of dis­tributing free software are acceptable, when they don’t conflict with the central freedoms. For example, copyleft (very simply stated) is the rule that when redistributing the program, you cannot add restrictions to deny other people the central freedoms. This rule does not conflict with the central freedoms; rather it protects them.

Whether a change constitutes an improvement is a subjective matter. If your modifications are limited, in substance, to changes that someone else considers an improvement, that is not freedom.

Sometimes government export control regulations and trade sanctions can constrain your freedom to distribute copies of programs internationally. Software develop­ers do not have the power to eliminate or override these restrictions, but what they can and must do is refuse to impose them as conditions of use of the program. In this way, the restrictions will not affect activities and people outside the jurisdictions of these governments. Thus, free software licenses must not require obedience to any export regulations as a condition of any of the essential freedoms.

Ubuntu is an African word meaning ‘Humanity to others’, or ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. The Ubuntu distribution brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the software world.

Ubuntu is a community developed operating system that is perfect for laptops, desktops and servers. Whether you use it at home, at school or at work Ubuntu contains all the applications you’ll ever need, from word processing and email applications, to web server software and programming tools.

Ubuntu is and always will be free of charge. You do not pay any licensing fees. You can download, use and share Ubuntu with your friends, family, school or business for absolutely nothing.

We issue a new desktop and server release every six months. That means you’ll always have the latest and greatest applications that the open source world has to offer.

Ubuntu is designed with security in mind. You get free security updates for at least 18 months on the desktop and server. With the Long Term Support (LTS) version you get three years support on the desktop, and five years on the server. There is no extra fee for the LTS version, we make our very best work available to everyone on the same free terms. Upgrades to new versions of Ubuntu are and always will be free of charge.

Everything you need comes on one CD, providing a complete working environment. Additional software is available online.

The graphical installer enables you to get up and running quickly and easily. A standard installation should take less than 25 minutes.

Once installed your system is immediately ready-to-use. On the desktop you have a full set of productivity, internet, drawing and graphics applications, and games.

On the server you get just what you need to get up and running and nothing you don’t.

Ubuntu in your local language

Ubuntu aims to be usable by as many people as possible, which is why we include the very best localisation and accessibility infrastructure that the free software community has to offer.

Edit and share files in other formats

Easily open, edit and share files with your friends that have Microsoft Office, Word Perfect, KOffice or StarOffice.

Quick and easy updates

The task bar contains an update area where we’ll notify you when there are updates available for your system, from simple security fixes to a complete version upgrade. The update facility enables you to keep your system up-to-date with just a few clicks of your mouse.

A vast library of free software

Need more software? Simply choose from thousands of software packages in the Ubuntu catalogue, all available to download and install at the click of a button. And it’s all completely free!

System requirements

Ubuntu is available for PC, 64-Bit PC and Intel-based Mac architectures. At least 256 MB of RAM is required to run the alternate install CD (384MB of RAM is required to use the live CD based installer). Install requires at least 4 GB of disk space.

In a world of self interest and declining resources, hitchhiking rekindles the magic of cooperation. Yet the hitchhiker is in no way a parasite. The stories you bring and even just your example of striking out on the road are often an inspiration for the people who pick you up. Hitchhiking is a give and take kind of thing and it’s in your power to change someone’s day.

By the side of the road your entire reality becomes focused on the next ride. Here you have no appointments, no schedules and all you really got to do is stick out your thumb. You arrive at your destination who knows when after who knows what. Yes, you may end up tired, wet and hungry but you’ll get there with a bag full of stories to tell and that’s more than you can say about a bus or a train.

In an age of organized consumer travel, where everything is mapped out, planned and insured from the start, hitchhiking is one of the few forms of true adventure left.

Tips and Tactics for Hitchhiking

•Men should only really hitchhike alone unless they’re prepared to wait for half a day at a time. Two teenagers together might seem innocent enough that they’ll get rides but other­wise go it alone.

•Keep your appearance smart and clean. Wearing a shirt and shaving (if you’re a guy) can help and don’t wear hats, shades, revealing clothes or outfits that mark you out as a “weirdo”, such as a turban or a kilt.

•When it comes to catching rides there are two main tactics in hitching. One is to stand by the side of the road and leave it to chance. The other is to head to gas stations and solicit lifts. You’ll probably end up doing them both out of necessity but each requires a different strategy.

•When you’re standing on the roadside, choose a place where cars can pull over safely. If you don’t you may either cause an accident or find the local police giving you a hard time. Never hitchhike on motorways unless it’s an absolute emer­gency but you can sometimes get away with standing on the slip roads leading on to the highway.

•Smile as the cars are coming and make sure they can see your face. The drivers have about three seconds to determine that you’re not a serial killer or a freak. Look as normal and harmless as you can.

•Depending on where you’re going a sign drawn with a felt tip pen on cardboard can be a good plan. It also shows that you’re a relatively together person and are going somewhere.

•If you find yourself stuck inside a town or a big city either try to hitch at traffic lights on the highway out of the city or take a bus out to the next small town on your route. Hitchhiking out of a metropolis is all but impossible.

•Hitching from gas stations has the obvious advantage that drivers get to size you up in person before letting you inside their cars. You can ask them where they’re going in a cheerful, friendly way and use all the charm at your disposal.

•You can carry on hitching into the night at gas stations too and load up on drinking water and supplies as you need. Sometimes there will even be enough space for you to kip down in the corridor or an unused part of the restaurant.

•By the side of the road you should give up at night though. No one will see you and so in addition to not getting any rides you might get run over.

•A good hitchhiker always carries a bed. A good sleeping bag and waterproof poncho as a groundsheet are excellent pre­cautions to take – in long distance hitching you have to keep your strength up by sleeping well. Waterproofs can also save your life during a rainstorm and remember that no one wants to pick up a wet and bedraggled hitchhiker. A hat and a scarf can also save your health when it gets cold and windy. Alone on a highway is a bad time to get ill.

•Carry all the elements with you: A bottle of water, a lighter and matches in case you need to make a fire at night, a loaf of bread, some nuts and dry fruit to keep your energy up and lastly a pen, a good map and a torch are all smart things to fill your jacket pockets.

As the name implies, dumpster diving (known as “skip diving” in many parts of the world) is the process of scavenging trash - not always dumpsters, however - for useful or valuable items. Believe it or not, dump­ster diving is quickly approaching mainstream status even in affluent countries. Whether you’re looking to furnish your home, fill your fridge, or cash in on other people’s trash, this brief guide will teach you the basic ins and outs of dumpster diving.

Remember, one person’s trash is another person’s treasure!

Tips and Tactics for Dumpster Diving

•Check out community Web sites for more free things. The free section of craigslist is a good resource if you live in a metropolitan area, and many communities have freecycle groups where people give away their unwanted treasures to keep them out of landfills. If you participate in one of these communities, remember to give as well as receive.

•If you live near a university when graduation rolls around the seniors have to move out fast and leave lots of stuff behind. Some janitors are nice and allow you to paw through the bags of stuff they leave outside the dorms to be picked up.

•Dive with a friend; it’s a lot more fun with company and safer, too. A friend can help you out if you become injured, can help defuse confrontations and keep look out.

•Empty your pockets and take off any jewelry before entering a dumpster so you don’t lose it in the trash for another diver to find.

•If confronted by a business owner, resident, rubbish hauler, or police officer, be polite and explain what you are doing. Many times people will assume that you are illegally dumping trash and will not bother you if they understand that you are not. In any case, always be friendly and respectful, and try to understand the other person’s point of view: business own­ers who tell you to leave the premises, for example, may be concerned about their legal liability if you were to be injured.

•While diving, keep a few cardboard boxes around outside the dumpster in a little pile. If confronted, you can say you were searching for some boxes to help with a move. The employees are more likely to give you a better reaction than if you tell them you were looking for products they sell.

•Let it be known in your neighborhood that you find homes for discarded items. Many people can’t be bothered to call a charity shop, but are all too happy to ask a neighbor to haul things away for them.

•When scavenging for food, look for freshly filled dumpsters rather than full dumpsters.

•Before vaulting into a dumpster, hit the side of the dumpster a few times to warn its inhabitants (i.e., possums, raccoons, rats, squirrels) of your impending scavenging.

•A white butcher smock makes you look like a grocery store employee and you are seldom bothered by other dumpster divers or law enforcement when they see that smock.

•A cheap set of long-handled fireplace log tongs work won­derfully for retrieving items if you don’t want to climb in. A miner’s cap with the light is better than a flashlight because it allows you to work two handed.

•If you don’t like to get very dirty, you can try magazine dumpster diving. The magazine recycling boxes are usually very clean, and sometimes you can find some very good read­ing material in them if you don’t want to buy a subscription to a magazine.

•If you are worried about safety, you can park your car in front of the dumpster to make it impossible to have it dumped. In some cases this is illegal, but if you are diving on a day close to trash pickup day, it could save your life.