Something happened to me over the weekend. I came home Friday with the idea of editing some posts about comics and movies, writing one of my own called “Isildur’s Bane,” scheduling a few videos, and taking most of the weekend off.
Ten minutes after I arrived home, The Pirate Org derailed that plan.
I found this in my Twitter feed:
Of course I had to look into it. Despite my best efforts to stick to books and videos, I have strong political views. I care about the human rights and civil liberties of real, actual people. I quickly decided this was something I couldn’t pass up. I debated whether to support The Day We Fight Back personally on Facebook and Twitter, or whether to blog about it here.
To make a long story short, I did some research. I posted about the Feb. 11 event and proposed a Thunderclap (if you don’t know what that is, see this page ). I didn’t get the support I needed to set up the Thunderclap, but I had some good conversations.
Those conversations led me to agree to a coalition with other WordPress bloggers who would like to share information about the spying and encourage people to talk about it. Yesterday, I set up a permanent page devoted to building this coalition and collecting information related to government surveillance. Â From here on out, I’ll devote a little bit of my blogging time to discussing this issue and providing updates on new developments. If you are interested in joining, read this page and make your own decision about how much participation works for you. It also includes links to information on what we know the NSA can do, surveillance-related legal cases, other bloggers who are writing about this, and The Day We Fight Back.
I included the NSA haiku generator on my Alliance page because I think it’s fun. It allows you to post NSA haiku to your Facebook and Twitter. So if you don’t do anything to support an end to spying that alliance members can see — if you never comment, I never meet you, and you just don’t follow this, there is still something on that page you can use.
You can make fun of them.
Ridicule is a powerful weapon.
(Shout outs: Alva, The Leather Library, Part Time Monster, Things Matter, Not in Our Name, Capt. Jill).
image: Manshonyagger/deviantart
(edited to correct The Pirate Org’s name)
Sourcerer 
Reblogged this on Alva's Almanac.
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Reblogged this on The Leather Library.
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Reblogged this on Confessions of a Geek Queen.
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Thanks for the reblog!
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This is a witty way to handle it; poke fun, that’s a good thing. I was amazed at how many harmless “geeky” words are part of the search criteria. I mean, I kind of expected the obvious – warfare, bombs, etc. But “TIE-fighter?” Really?
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Thanks! It’s all I could come up with. Trying to find ways to produce things that people can read and enjoy, because we can’t just write a post every week that says “spying is bad. we need to stop it.” I have the haiku generator saved to a browser button so I can use it to generate tweets. I usually try several before I find one worth sharing.
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