The hacker collective Anonymous has taken down the official Formula 1 website with a Distributed Denial Of Service (DDOS) attack. The group claims it is in response toincreasingly violent protests in Bahrainahead of this weekend’s Formula 1 race.

UPDATE (11:27 AM EST): The mobile site for Formula 1 is still up, but the regular website is still down. So is live timing.

UPDATE (11:19 AM EST): We now also have the following press release also purporting to be from Anonymous:

Anonymous Press Release – Operation Bahrain

Thursday – April 19, 2012 7:00 PM ET USA

Anonymous has watched with growing alarm the incredible human rights abuses of the Bahrain regime. We have watched this tyrannical government tear gas it’s own people literally to death, with over 30 fatalities so far. We have watched as thousands of innocent protesters and activists have been jailed. We have suffered with our dear friend @AngryArabiya on Twitter as she watches her father slowly die of a hunger strike in prison to protest the atrocities committed by the regime of this “king” of Bahrain. We have witnessed doctors and nurses imprisoned for simply treating the wounded protesters that your security forces have brutalized. And finally we have suffered in outrage the ignorance and out right lies of mainstream media regarding what is REALLY happening in Bahrain.

1) This is NOT a Shia uprising against a Sunni government. It is a popular and peaceful revolt against the medieval concept of absolute monarchy. It is a movement that spans all strata and sectors of society, and all religions in Bahrain. It is a movement that demands only freedom, justice – and democracy.

2) This government is not quelling violent protests, it is brutally and violently crushing peaceful dissent.

3) This government is NOT legitimate. It is a tyrannical, barbaric – and human rights violating dictatorship. And ANYONE doing business with this regime have the blood of Bahrain’s Freedom Martyrs on their hands.

For over a year now, we have as a global movement concentrated our efforts in Libya and Syria, leaving Anonymous Bahrain to to defend their fellow citizens in cyber space. This will no longer be the case. As of tomorrow, Friday – April 20, 2012 the entire global Anonymous will begin to take up the cause of the Bahrain Revolution. The King of Bahrain be warned, we are about to unleash the worst shitstorm you have ever seen – and your time as dictator is over. We will help your people remove you from power, and we will see you tried in the Hague for your many crimes against humanity.

The occasion of Anonymous re-launching Operation Bahrain will be this despicable Grand Prix Formula One race to be held in Bahrain tomorrow through the 22nd of April. Mr. Eccelstone, you are either one evil mother fucker to hold your race in support of this regime (The Kings family are actually investors and make direct profit) – or else you have been lied to and are ignorant of the atrocities committed by these tyrants. In either case, beginning tomorrow – and lasting for the duration of your race we are going to fucking educate you on the truth in a way you can not ignore.

Beginning tomorrow, and lasting for the duration of this race – Anonymous will turn your web site (www.formula1.com) into a smoking crater in cyber space. We will also jam your phone lines, bomb your E-Mail inboxes – and wreck anything else of yours we can find on the internet. You can god damn well expect us. And to anyone in the world who watches this race, either in person or on television – you also have the blood of the Bahrain Freedom Martyrs on your hands. Turn your face away from this abominable entertainment, and join us online to defend the brave protesters fighting for their freedom in Bahrain. Finally, we join with Anonymous Bahrain in asking that all the drivers in this race protest this evil regime by refusing to cross the start line at the beginning of the race.

Internet Freedom Fighters around the globe, join us this weekend and fight for freedom and justice in Bahrain: irc.voxanon.net #OpBahrain

We Are Anonymous – We Are Everywhere – We Are Legion – We Never Forget – We Never Forgive – EXPECT US

SIGNED — Anonymous

A former F1 fan website F1-racers.net was also pulled down and the following statement,attributed to the hacker collective Anonymous has been pasted on the site’s front page:

Greetings from Anonymous

For over one year the people of Bahrain have struggled against the oppressive regime of King Hamad bin Al Khalifa. They have been murdered in the streets, run over with vehicles, beaten, tortured, tear gassed, kidnapped by police, had their businesses vandalised by police, and have tear gas thrown in to their homes on a nightly basis.

Still the regmine persists to deny any meaningful reform and continues to use brutal and violent tactics to oppress the popular calls for reformation. Not only is the Human Rights situation in Bahrain tragic, it becomes more drastic with each passing day. For these reasons the F1 Grand Prix in Bahrain should be strongly opposed. The Al Khalifa regime stands to profit heavily off the race and has promised to use live ammunition against protestors in preparation. They have already begun issuing collective punishment to entire villages for protests and have promised further retribution “to keep order” for the F1 events in Bahrain. The Formula 1 racing authority was well-aware of the Human Rights situation in Bahrain and still chose to contribute to the regime’s oppression of civilians and will be punished.

We demand the immediate release of human rights worker Abdulhadi Alkhawaja who has spent over 70 days on hunger strike. He has committed no crimes and is being punished by the regime for advocating people’s basic human rights. Free him and all other political prisoners in Bahrain. End torture. Deport all mercenary police and stop the use of tear gas against civilians.

We Do Not Forgive. We Do Not Forget. Expect Us.

0×0 was and still is here. Join #OpBahrain

In addition, the official Formula 1 website has been brought to its knees and has not been returning data requests for the past hour.

If you were involved in the DDoS — or you have the scoop on how Anonymous took down Bernie Ecclestone’s evil web empire, send me an email.

Source: Jalopnik. Updates posted live at link.

Our beloved TG boys staging a protest. This cut is from Season 13, Episode 03. Enjoy!

For more of Top Gear:
www.topgear.com
www.finalgear.com

Belgian police have arrested almost 500 peace activists outside the NATO HQ in Brussels. Protesters attempted to storm the building, but were met with a heavy-handed response from hundreds of officers. Demonstrators say the march was called to protest NATO’s hawkish intervention policies. For more on this RT talks to one of the activists who actually took part. Hans Lammerant, a spokesman for ‘NATO Game Over’, joins us now from Brussels.

Several hundred Occupy Wall Street activists marched through Manhattan on Saturday to protest against what they say is police repression as they try to revive their movement.

Several demonstrators were arrested along the route of the march in scuffles with New York police, who deployed in large numbers to keep activists on sidewalks.

“There were a few arrests, but we don’t have a final number yet,” an NYPD spokeswoman said.

Skirmishes between police and Occupy protesters, who say they represent America’s “99 percent” against a ruling “one percent,” have become near daily occurrences in New York since the spring weather turned warm in recent days.

After surging to international prominence six months ago with its occupation of a plaza near Wall Street, the loosely led organization largely dropped out of the news over the winter. But efforts are building to get Occupy Wall Street back on the move.

“I’m so glad so many of the 99 percent are here today,” one organizer, Aaron, who refused to give his last name, told a crowd of about 200 gathered at Union Square following the march.

“They said we were over, they said we were hibernating, they said we were asleep. Do we look asleep?”

CONTINUED at The Raw Story.

While some of radio host Rush Limbaugh’s opponents have called for more civilized discourse, the Missouri chapter of the National Organization for Women spent Monday voicing its displeasure at Limbaugh with toilet paper — or a lack of it.

As part of their “Flush Rush” campaign to keep the state from honoring the radio giant with a bust in the Hall of Famous Missourians, the group delivered 504 rolls of toilet paper to the office of Republican House Speaker Steven Tilley, KMOX NewsRadio 1120 reports.

“Rush Limbaugh is a misogynist and a bigot and a bully and we don’t need a role model like that in Missouri,” said Claire Major, the vice president of the Missouri NOW chapter, explaining why his head should not be featured in the Hall.

Missouri’s KRCG reported Monday afternoon that Tilley, who decided to honor the Cape Girardeau native, told reporters he does not intend to change his mind.

CONTINUED at The Daily Caller.

New York City police are investigating death threats made against staff through the phone and on twitter. This after officers forcibly arrested more than 70 people during an Occupy Wall Street protest. Since the start of the movement, nationwide protests have faced numerous cases of police brutality with batons and tear gas often used to disperse crowds. As the movement continues, so too does Washington’s desire to silence the American public, as RT’s Marina Portnaya explains.

Thousands of critics of capitalism meeting in Brazil called Sunday for a worldwide protest in June to press for concrete steps to tackle the global economic crisis.

The World Social Forum wrapped up a five-day meeting in this southern Brazilian city, urging citizens to “take to the streets on June 5″ for the global action, which would be in support of social and environmental justice.

The forum also announced a “peoples’ summit” of social movements to be held in parallel with the high-level UN conference on sustainable development scheduled next June 20-22 in Rio.

The Rio+20 summit, the fourth major gathering on sustainable development since 1972, will press world leaders to commit themselves to creating a social and “green economy,” with priority being given to eradicating hunger.

But World Social Forum participants, including representatives of the Arab Spring, Spain’s “Indignant” movement, Occupy Wall Street, and students from Chile, sharply criticized the concept of “a green economy” that would allow multinational corporations to reap the profit.

“The political and economic elites are the one percent who control the world and we are the one percent seeking to change it. Where are the (other) 98 percent?” said Chico Whitaker, one of the Forum’s founders.

“There are many who are happy because each time they get more consumer goods, but many are concerned and unsatisfied. The challenge for us is to speak with them.”

“If we do not raise the issue of inequality, we won’t solve the problems,” said Venezuelan sociologist Edgardo Lander.

“If the system is not capable of redistributing and deal with inequality, we have to do it ourselves,” agreed Sam Halvorsen, of the Occupy London movement.

The Forum is an alliance of social movements opposed to the World Economic Forum, the annual gathering of the world’s economic and political elites held at the same time in the Swiss resort of Davos.

Addressing the gathering Thursday, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff appealed for “a development model that articulates growth and job creation, battles poverty and decreases inequalities,” and advocates for the “sustainable use and preservation of natural resources.”

Candido Grzywoski, one of the founders and a coordinator of the Forum, said the urgency of the global economic crisis and the popular indignation around the world “gave us more unity in diversity.”

The Forum, which drew around 40,000 participants this year, has its roots in 1999 street protests in the US city of Seattle during a World Trade Organization meeting but it settled in Porto Alegre as its regular venue 12 years ago when it drew 20,000 activists from around the world.

Next year, it will be held in Cairo.

Source: Breitbart.

*Written by Rob Rimes.

Today is a great day for liberty. As I write this it is January 18^th, 2012 and the Internet is ablaze with anger towards SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act). Not only was The Swash down in protest of these dastardly bills but Internet giants Wikipedia and Reddit were down as well. Shit, even Google participated in this blackout with a unique graphic on their page that lead to information about these two horrible laws and what you can do to fight them.

I was more than ecstatic today when I signed into my Facebook account and was overwhelmed by all the people who blacked out their own photos and had status updates and links protesting SOPA and PIPA plastered all over the home page. The impact of this protest is literally reaching further than any other online protest I’ve ever witnessed or been a part of. In fact, in just a few short hours, the tide has turned and the pimps pushing this law are now starting to run like the two-faced pandering bastards they are. I guess when you shine a little light the cockroaches scatter.

One of my favorite punching bags, Marco Rubio – the Republican senator form my home state of Florida, was a co-sponsor on one of these evil bills but he has now come out against it. This is because Rubio is a dickbag, a panderer and a wolf in Tea Party clothing. This “noble” act doesn’t excuse the fact that he co-sponsored PIPA and was also a champion for the insanely tyrannical NDAA bill, which just passed recently. Don’t get excited and let Rubio fool you, when this dies down, he’ll help reintroduce the bill with a few modifications and continue on his fascist path.

Conservative darling Paul Ryan just wrote this status update on his Facebook:

The Internet is one of the most magnificent expressions of freedom and free enterprise in history. It should stay that way. While H.R. 3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act, attempts to address a legitimate problem, I believe it creates the precedent and possibility for undue regulation, censorship and legal abuse. I do not support H.R. 3261 in its current form and will oppose the legislation should it come before the full House.

While that sounds all fine and dandy, Mr. Ryan doesn’t fully oppose the idea of the bill and chances are, if it was tweaked and the opposition towards it died down, he may just very well vote for it.

Senators Jim DeMint, Robert Menendez and others have come out against this tyranny. Another co-sponsor, Arizona congressman Ben Quayle has withdrawn his support. Freedom fighter and libertarian leaning Michigan congressman Justin Amash continues to speak out against this, as does Kentucky senator Rand Paul and his father, Texas congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul.

The opposition to these bills has grown so quickly in the last several hours that six Republican senators wrote a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The letter states:

We have increasingly heard from a large number of constituents and other stakeholders with vocal concerns about possible unintended consequences of the proposed legislation, including breaches in cybersecurity, damaging the integrity of the Internet, costly and burdensome litigation, and dilution of First Amendment rights.

For those of you who have been in the dark, I’ll break down what these bills are. In a nutshell, what they are supposed to do is to protect copyrighted material and eliminate piracy. What they actually do is a different story.

Basically, these bills give the entertainment industry the power to censor the Internet and breed a whole new type of crony capitalism while forcing us into a digital police state. You see, private corporations want to be able to choose what can and cannot be censored on the Internet. These corporations are trying to protect their property, which is understandable, and since the Internet is a bastion for downloading music and movies, they want to be able to tighten their grip and control how the whole system works. Considering that many of the sources for this copyrighted material exists outside of United States jurisdiction, these laws are being put in place to give the government and their corporate buddies an easier way at stopping copyright infringement. Again, that is understandable but the methods about doing this are just awful.

The first thing that this does is it gives the power to United States based ISPs (Internet Service Providers) to have special access at blocking infringing domain names. This also gives companies the power to sue websites, bloggers or whoever until they remove links or information directing Internet users to anything that they deem as infringed upon property.

Secondly, the government and their corporate pals would also be given the power to cut off funds to any websites that they believe are infringing on copyrights. Essentially, they can forcibly cancel infringing websites accounts with financial services and advertisers.

Now even though this all may seem somewhat proactive, one has to look at what actually constitutes copyright infringement. The description that they provide is so broad that if you technically upload a video to YouTube and there happens to be a piece of a song playing in the background, even if it’s just on the radio while you’re talking to the camera unaware of it, you have just infringed on copyrighted material and could face some serious penalties. This is just a small example but think of all the things you come across on the Internet on a daily basis that could technically be considered as copyright infringement. Violations are pretty much fucking everywhere! Hell, the whole Internet is a violation!

Besides all that, if there is a will there is a way. These laws won’t stop Internet users from finding music and movies to download illegally. In fact, even if a URL is blocked, an Internet user can still access the site via its IP address. Hell, this might start a revolution in web browsing and millions of digital pirates will be navigating the Net with IPs as opposed to typical URLs.

Another thing to mention is that these laws are incredibly bad for business. Essentially, they will cripple and stifle startups as corporations will have the power to sue any company that they feel isn’t properly protecting their interests. In a classic case of crony capitalism or corporatism, this allows the giants to stay on top, where they can look down and crush any growing company that may become a viable competitor for their business. Basically, these bills will create and perpetuate monopolies. When large corporations have the power to bankrupt new search engines and social networking sites, there really isn’t room for growth or innovation. We might as well just go back to the days of dark dingy uninspiring chat rooms.

The scariest thing that these laws will do is tamper with the Internet as a whole from the backend. By messing around with the Internet’s vast registry of domain names we could very well end up with a World Wide Web that is less stable and less secure. At the end of the day, these laws won’t stop piracy, as they claim and they will just create an environment for a new type of corporatism while leaving the Internet less secure and less reliable than it has ever been.

The Internet has already become a playground for government and corporate meddling. Hell, they already have laws in place to protect copyright infringement yet they want to push the envelope as far as they can. As of right now, the government and corporations already have the power to block any site just off of one infringing link. Social media giants like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube and others are now forced to censor their users because if they don’t, they become liable for the material their users upload and could be forced to shut down. On top of that, an ordinary Internet user could already be sentenced to prison for up to five years just for posting any copyrighted material – this includes someone like Tay Zonday who became an Internet sensation for singing pop song covers.

This situation is incredibly fucked up and it is just one more battle in a long line or tyrannous laws that the government is trying to impose on us. Just add this ingredient to the same bowl of tyranny punch that already consists of the PATRIOT Act, NDAA, indefinite detention, Homeland Security, the TSA, previous Internet censorship, FEMA, etc. The list goes on and on and hopefully people’s distrust in government has grown to the point that all future legislation the tyrants bring forth will be scrutinized and passionately opposed as much as SOPA and PIPA.

In the end, we’ve got to chain these bastards’ feet to the grill and turn up the fire until they do what we say because frankly, that’s their damn job.

It’s on — at least partially: Reddit has announced that it will be going dark for 12 hours to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act, and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has said that he hopes to coordinate with the site so that Wikipedia does the same. Will other sites join in? Should we prepare for the Great Internet Strike of 2012?

Writing that it’s “not taking this action lightly,” Reddit announced on Tuesday that it will blackout its site on Wednesday, January 18 for 12 hours, starting at 8:00 a.m. Eastern time. During that period, the site’s content will be replaced with “a simple message about how the PIPA/SOPA legislation would shut down sites like reddit, link to resources to learn more, and suggest ways to take action.” The company will also run a live video stream of that day’s House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing on Internet security, intellectual property and economic growth.

On the site’s blog, the Reddit team admitted that “We’re as addicted to reddit as the rest of you,” but explained that “We wouldn’t do this if we didn’t believe this legislation and the forces behind it were a serious threat to reddit and the Internet as we know it. Blacking out reddit is a hard choice, but we feel focusing on a day of action is the best way we can amplify the voice of the community.” The company admits that support for a blackout isn’t unanimous among the Reddit community and it’s asking for the community’s input as it decides what to do next.

(MORE: At the Top of Congress’ New Year Agenda? Regulate the Net)

If support isn’t unanimous within Reddit’s community, it’ll be interesting to see how things go for Wikipedia if that site follows suit. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales writes ”it would be great if we could act quickly to coordinate with Reddit,” thought adding the community needs a “thumbs up/thumbs down vote” on whether or not to participate, and “we don’t have the luxury of time that we usually have, in terms of negotiating with each other for weeks about what’s exactly the best possible thing to do.” I suspect the ratio of those in favor of a blackout to those opposed would be greater for a more activist site like Reddit than one that’s more mainstream (and let’s be honest, passive) like Wikipedia.

Something I appreciate about Reddit’s announcement is that they’ve factored in the importance of educating would-be visitors to the site about why they’ve decided to go dark, what SOPA is and why it’s so important. I can only assume Wikipedia would do the same thing, should the site community decide to go dark on the same day. After all, protests only work when people understand why they’re happening.

That said, now that we have a date for a potential shutdown, the question becomes “Who else will join in?” Google, Twitter and Facebook have all been rumored as contenders, in part because of comments made by NetCoalition’s Markham Erickson (when I asked, Google and Twitter declined to comment on their support for an Internet blackout). But with a real strike looming and despite attempts to push the issue onto agendas, support for this kind of action may be shifting in favor of alternative methods. Finding other ways to protest may be ineluctable — after all, we’re talking about the Internet’s most popular sites going dark for 24 hours.

Sure, there may be some disappointment that we’re not days from Temporary Internet Apocalypse To Prove a Point, but I suspect there’s relief as well. The idea of a multi-pronged attack on pro-SOPA arguments — of different flavors of activism and discussion for different people — feels like the more mature response on behalf of tech companies (who after all may not agree on what’s wrong with SOPA as it stands). Let Wikipedia close for the day and generate headlines, while others like Google and Facebook pursue alternative forms of protest that engage their respective audiences. In the end, the more people paying attention, the better.

MORE: SOPA: What if Google, Facebook and Twitter Went Offline in Protest?
Source: Tech Land.