Azadi (“Freedom”) Tower, the gateway to Tehran designed in 1966 by a then 24-year-old Hossein Amanat. A practicing Bahai’i, Hossein was forced to flee Iran after the Islamist government labeled followers of the religion “unprotected infidels.” He now lives in Canada. (Amos Chapple)# (via One photographer’s journey inside Iran - The Big Picture - Boston.com)

Azadi (“Freedom”) Tower, the gateway to Tehran designed in 1966 by a then 24-year-old Hossein Amanat. A practicing Bahai’i, Hossein was forced to flee Iran after the Islamist government labeled followers of the religion “unprotected infidels.” He now lives in Canada. (Amos Chapple)# (via One photographer’s journey inside Iran - The Big Picture - Boston.com)

"

“How can I put my name to such a document when it goes against everything I believe in,” he said in an interview on Wednesday. “If I signed this, it would be a betrayal not only of myself but of my fellow priests and lay Catholics who want change. I refuse to be terrified into submission.”

The Vatican objected in particular to an article published in 2010 in Reality, an Irish religious magazine. In the article, Father Flannery, a Redemptorist priest, wrote that he no longer believed that “the priesthood as we currently have it in the church originated with Jesus” or that he designated “a special group of his followers as priests.”

Instead, he wrote, “It is more likely that some time after Jesus, a select and privileged group within the community who had abrogated power and authority to themselves, interpreted the occasion of the Last Supper in a manner that suited their own agenda.”

"

Priest Is Planning to Defy the Vatican’s Orders to Stay Quiet - NYTimes.com

"Toutes les institutions en charge aujourd’hui de l’éducation s’efforcent avant tout d’inculquer aux enfants les principes d’une existence automatique. Sans tenir compte de leur âge et des questions propres à cet âge. Elles inoculent la cruauté et le rejet de toute idée non conformiste. Dès l’enfance, l’homme doit oublier sa liberté."

Les Inrocks - Maria Alekhina, Pussy Riot: “Je n’ai pas peur de vous”

"The crazy, chaotic, idealistic days of the Internet are ending. Once, the Prairies were open and shared by everyone. Then the farmers arrived and fenced them in. The same is happening to the Internet: Apple, Amazon and Facebook are putting up fences — and Google is increasingly being left outside."

Google is powerful now, but Amazon, Facebook, and Apple are taking over | Business | TIME.com

"Négocié plutôt que débattu démocratiquement, ACTA contourne les parlements et les organisations internationales pour imposer une logique répressive dictée par les industries du divertissement. Si il était instauré, cet accord créerait de nouvelles sanctions pénales forçant les acteurs de l’Internet à surveiller et à censurer les communications en ligne. IL s’agit donc d’une menace majeure pour la liberté d’expression en ligne et est porteur d’insécurité juridique pour les entreprises de l’Internet."

ACTA, une loi déguisée en accord commercial qui criminalise le partage du savoir sur la toile ! | Liberté sur paroles - Emission d’Eugénie Barbezat sur Aligre FM

"I would rather stay here and starve—and die, if it come to that—than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood. The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits."

Letters of Note: To My Old Master

"« Bouygues n’a pas le même rapport à l’argent que le commun des mortels. Neuf millions, […] pour le pédégé du groupe Bouygues, c’est pratiquement un septième du prix du yacht baptisé “Bâton rouge” - en hommage à la ville natale de sa femme, Melissa - qu’il s’est offert en septembre 2010 »."

Bouygues veut faire taire Le Canard enchaîné - Acrimed | Action Critique Médias

"Facebook ou Google soulèvent, quant à eux, d’autres problèmes. Ils centralisent plus de données qu’aucun état dictatorial n’oserait jamais imaginer. Facebook surveille notre navigation internet, fait de la reconnaissance de visages sur nos images et bien sûr, garde toutes nos données. Cela pose de grands problèmes aux États-Unis et de plus grands encore pour ceux qui ne résident pas au États-Unis : vers quelle juridiction allez-vous vous tourner en France si Facebook abuse de vos données aux États-Unis ? Et puis, il y a aussi les caméras de surveillance et les téléphones portables, qui peuvent maintenant se transformer en dispositif d’écoute ou transmettre des coordonnées GPS. Le téléphone portable, c’est le rêve de Staline."

Richard Stallman : « Je ne veux pas suivre les ordres des riches » - Regards.fr

"The contacts list and IP address data of Jacob Appelbaum, a WikiLeaks volunteer and developer for Tor was given to the U.S. government after they requested it using a secret court order enabled by a controversial 1986 law called the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, according to the Wall Street Journal. The law allows the government to demand information from ISPs not only without a warrant, but without ever notifying the user."

Google Hands Wikileaks Volunteer’s Gmail Data to U.S. Government

"The more recent reaction (to 9/11) was to shift all of society and almost every aspect of American culture, the activities of ever government department and agency, the expectations and rule sets, the budgets, the procedural manuals, and everything else to a paranoid modality and to institute what is essentially a low-level police state. That’s a difference worth noting. And worth complaining about. Generation 9/11. History will be at least a little embarrassed by us."

Generation 9/11. History will be embarrassed by us. | The X Blog

"C’est difficile de juger de la sexualité de générations plus jeunes que la sienne. La sexualité des gens de 30 ans, je n’y participe pas, je ne suis pas une cougar. Mon sentiment (je le dis avec des pincettes), c’est que les mentalités sont plus ouvertes qu’avant, mais par rapport à nos pratiques de 68, il me semble que c’est moins ludique, qu’il manque la liberté de la chose improvisée. On dînait avec des copains, rien n’était prévu, on se déshabillait et tout le monde baisait ensemble ; ce n’est pas la même atmosphère que celle d’un club échangiste où tout est cadré."

Dix ans après, Catherine Millet vous reparle de sexe (et d’amour) | Rue89

"Turing’s homosexuality resulted in a criminal prosecution in 1952, when homosexual acts were still illegal in the United Kingdom. He accepted treatment with female hormones (chemical castration) as an alternative to prison. He died in 1954, several weeks before his 42nd birthday, from cyanide poisoning. An inquest determined it was suicide; his mother and some others believed his death was accidental. On 10 September 2009, following an Internet campaign, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown made an official public apology on behalf of the British government for the way in which Turing was treated after the war."

Alan Turing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia