Keyvan Minoukadeh

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Avrusta peace activists Annika Spalde and Cattis Laska talk to Amy Goodman of Democracy Now about their disarmament actions. Sadly, they are facing prison, not a peace prize. If you’d like to show your support for the activists and their actions, you can sign the appeal on their website (available in English and Swedish).

You can read a transcript of the interview or watch the entire December 9 show which was recorded in Sweden and includes information on Alfred Nobel and Sweden’s social welfare programme. Note: one small mistake in the interview is the description of Ofog as a Christian network.

Google Analytics is Google’s free tracking service used by many sites to collect information on visitors and their browsing habits. Google want users of the service to “Spend on marketing, not on web analytics.” Google is not the only company offering this type of service, but theirs is probably the most popular. If, like me, you feel these services help advertisers and marketers more than regular web users, you can stop participating and block them from collecting information on your online activities. To get started, I highly recommend you install Adblock Plus (if you haven’t already) and subscribe to EasyPrivacy (it’s free).

EasyPrivacy is a list of filters maintained by Rick, the same guy behind the very popular EasyList. While EasyList does a great job of filtering out advertising on the web (see my ad-free browsing guide), EasyPrivacy targets the less conspicuous tracking and marketing services, including Google Analytics.

Another benefit of subscribing to these lists is that you’ll likely notice web pages load a lot quicker as the ads/trackers are no longer requested—Adblock Plus doesn’t just hide ads, it actually prevents the HTTP requests for ads/trackers from leaving your browser.