December 22, 2010 archive

David Frost interviews Julian Assange



AlJazeeraEnglish | 22 December 2010 | 24 minutes

WikiLeaks founder talks about secrets, leaks and why he will not go back to Sweden.

FCC Passes Net Neutrality Rules: Plenty to Hate

Yesterday the FCC passed new ‘Net Neutrality’ rules along party lines: 3-2.  The full text of the rules haven’t yet been released, but the draft proposals have drawn plenty of fire from both sides, and many experts predict different portions will end up in court soon after they take effect at the beginning of next year.

If I understand correctly, the FCC failed to assert that wireless broadband should fall under their jurisdiction and classify Broadband as a communication service, leaving telecoms to their own devices, making it possible to control what applications you can access on hand-held devices.  

The new rules seem to provide for a two-tiered service for different IPs, and that corporate  heavy-hitters like Google and Amazon will be able to provide faster access than the second-tier IPs.

Good News: UN To Investigate Brad Manning’s Confinement

Just in from the New York Times:

The United Nations says it is looking into a complaint that the Army private suspected of giving classified documents to WikiLeaks has been mistreated in custody.

The UN office for torture issues in Geneva said Wednesday it received a complaint from one of Pfc. Bradley Manning’s supporters alleging that conditions in a Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Va., amount to torture. Visitors say he spends at least 23 hours a day alone in a cell.

The Pentagon has denied mistreating Manning. A Marine Corps spokesman says the military is keeping Manning safe, secure and ready for trial. …

The UN could ask the United States to stop any violations it finds.

So I guess the petition we all signed is working.

Good news.  

Hitler Speaks Through His Sock-Puppet “Jacob Freeze”

I was visiting the soul of my pal Barack Obama in Future-Hell yesterday and he mentioned his internet sock-puppet, the idiot Jacob Freeze, “prophetic wonder-man of political blogging” with a single-digit audience of single-digit weirdos.

“You wanna get some stuff off your chest somewhere nobody will pay it no fucking attention?” says Barry. “This guy is more obscure than farting in Martian Morse code!”

“Toot-ta-ta-toot-toot!” says I, and we’re off to the “races!”

Toot-toot-ta-toot ta-ta-toot-toot ta-toot-ta…

“Adolf?” says Obama.

Toot?

“You don’t have to fart in Martian Morse code with my sock-puppet Jacob Freeze. That’s the point of that idiot! Nobody is listening!”

“I knew that,” says I, and so after a little preliminary fucking around with my soul-mate in Hell Barack Obama, let’s get down to business.

You stupid fucking Yankees thought you won WWII, but while I spent the next 65 years fucking ladyboys in Brazil, did you ever notice…

WHO RULES EUROPE?

Is it your wheezing British allies? Or is it MY ARYAN SUPERMEN in Germany?

Harharharhar!!!

Thanks for D-Day, morons!

Now we own everything, from the beaches in Greece to the bonds in London!

And look at yourselves!

All you had to do to “win” WWII was transform yourselves into a fascist security empire, where you pay for everything and rule nothing!

YOU pay for everything, and rule NOTHING!

No power, no jobs and no dignity! My airport-Nazis grope your woowoos every time you get on a plane!

Harharharhar!!!

You were already the biggest suckers in the history of the world, and then you elected Obama!

Harharharhar!!!  

A Leaker Inside WikiLeaks?

The United States diplomatic cables leak (also known as Cablegate) began on 28 November 2010 when WikiLeaks – an international new media non-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret and classified media from anonymous news sources and news leaks – started to publish classified documents of detailed correspondence between the U.S. State Department and its diplomatic missions around the world, releasing further documents every day.

Five major newspapers around the world have been publishing articles based on the leaks, by agreement with Wikileaks. The publication of the U.S. embassy cables is the third in a series of U.S. classified document “mega-leaks” distributed by WikiLeaks in 2010, following the Afghan War documents leak in July, and the Iraq War documents leak in October. The contents of the cables describe international affairs from 300 embassies dated from 1966-2010, containing diplomatic analysis of world leaders, an assessment of host countries, and a discussion about international and domestic issues.



The first 220 of the 251,287 documents were published on 28 November
, with simultaneous press coverage from El PaĆ­s (Spain), Le Monde (France), Der Spiegel (Germany), The Guardian (United Kingdom), and The New York Times (United States). Over 130,000 of the documents are unclassified, some 100,000 are labeled “confidential”, about 15,000 documents have the higher classification “secret”, and none are classified as “top secret” on the classification scale. As of 16 December 2010, 1,532 individual cables had been released. WikiLeaks plans to release all the cables in phases over several months at a pace of about 80 cables per day. (wikipedia – For the contents of released cables, see Contents of the United States diplomatic cables leak.)

Now, the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten appears in a short article December 21 to be saying that it has obtained access, absent any agreement with WikiLeaks, to all of the 251,287 “CableGate” documents, and will begin publishing all of them over the coming weeks and months.

Aftenposten publishes only in Norwegian, however a Google English translation of the article reads as follows:

Website Wikileaks has published thousands of secret stamped documents. The latest leak is comprised of documents from the U.S. Foreign Service. Aftenposten has no clauses have access to all the 250,000 documents from the last leak.

[…]

The next days, weeks and months we will go through the massive material, and continuously publish news stories both online and paper.

To make our review more efficient, we would like tips from our readers.

Is there anything you wonder where you think the answer may lie in the messages that have been leaked to Wikileaks?

Tip us on [email protected]

Hat Tip to LodinLepp at DailyKos.

I can almost hear  the sounds of desk drawers being hurriedly emptied and running footsteps in the halls of the U.S. State Department, from here…

Australia’s Herald Sun confirms the story today, stating:

What’s In The Brown Paper Bag?

(I originally posted this item in December, 2009, at The Dream Antilles.  This is a short story by Luis Ramirez, who was executed in Texas on October 20, 2005. My thanks to Abe Bonowitz for passing this story along to me. The story doesn’t require any commentary, and I’m not going to give any. It’s a gift to all of you for the Holidays, Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, New Year’s, Solstice, whatever holiday, if any, you may celebrate.)

Muse in the Morning

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
Muse in the Morning

Time for a break from poetry…in order to create some art.

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.

–Henry David Thoreau



Glyph 11

On How To Honor The Brave, Or, Why We Hate Republicans

We are coming down to the end of the 111th Congress, and we are all surprised that a number of things actually got done: a nuclear arms reduction treaty appears to be on the verge of approval, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was repealed; we have new health care and financial reforms (admittedly, they’re imperfect solutions, but…), food safety reform, a better way to do student loans, and a credit card reform act that’s forcing issuers to spend thousands of labor hours to develop new and better ways to work over consumers.

And yet there is one important bit of legislation that is still being blocked by Republicans, and, amazingly enough, it’s a bill that would provide health care and compensation for those people who ran down to the World Trade Center site on September 11th, and for months thereafter, in the effort to rescue and recover victims, and to restore normal operations in the city after the attack.

Yes, folks, you heard me correctly: the Party of waving flags and “Second Amendment solutions” and tri-cornered hats and Rudy (“noun, verb, 9/11”) Giuliani is now engaged in a desperate battle to screw over the very 9/11 first responders that you would think they would be…well, putting up on a stage somewhere next to Rudy Giuliani.

Late Night Karaoke

A statement from a section of the French workers

What I have copied over the fold is a declaration issued recently by a self organized group of French workers, a statement of solidarity and strategy in the face of the global neoliberal push (putsch?) for “austerity”.  They call for global resistance based on the following principles:  

– We can take control of our own struggles and organise collectively.

– We can discuss together openly and fraternally, we can speak freely with each other.

– We can control of our own discussions and our own decisions.

Can the workers of the world unite?

A Christmas Carol: USA vs Canadian Flash Mob

Canadian Christmas Caroling:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

Air Canada sponsors a local band “Abandon Paris” to sing at the Vancouver Airport on Saturday, while dancers from the Arts Umbrella Dance Company put on red stocking caps and dance in the airport.

Air Canada Flashmob. Abandon Paris sings “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” at the Vancouver Airport

United States Christmas Caroling:

Attempt at singing Christmas carols results in evacuation of Roseville CA, Westfield Galleria Mall when gathering crowd hears creaking sounds and feels floor shift under their feet.  

You remember the Roseville Galleria Mall.  https://www.docudharma.com/diar…    It was the one a single crazy arsonist set fire back to earlier this fall,  on Oct 21, resulting in millions of dollars worth of damage, (partially thanks to the Roseville PD, because the sprinklers were turned off,  and they wouldn’t let the Fire Dept into the building because Crazy Pyro Guy had a …. backpack. So they send in The Bomb Finding Robot, the Fire Dept has to use ladder trucks from the outside, a giant hole burns through the roof of the mall, and days later, under the fallen ashes and debris…  it was still a backpack.   ) and Gov. Schwarzenegger then declaring Placer County under a state of emergency.  Well, they got part of the Galleria Mall open for the Holiday shopping season, the Sacramento Choral Society shows up at the Food Court,  and….


12/20/10 Auburn Journal

Police reported receiving between 40 and 50  “911” calls from shoppers warning of dangerous overcrowding They dispatched 10 police cars, in addition to the five fire engines, one truck and four ambulances.

From a helicopter, officials ordered people to get into their vehicles or leave the promenade, where many of the singers and listeners had gathered. Joyfully defying officers, the choir members rang out with cries of “O Holy Night,” “We wish you a merry Christmas,” and of course, Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus.

A fire department spokesman said mall officials knew about the pending concert and described the movement at the food court as what one might see in a minor earthquake. No injuries were reported.

An estimated 5,000 people had to be evacuated, and it made international headlines.  Yay California !

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worl…

Some Chorus people did not immediately try to leave the mall and contribute to the ongoing massive traffic jam at the nearby 65 exit/entrance ramp, but instead attempted to sing outside.    Catch the infamous multimillion dollar Placer County helicopter circling overhead ordering them to leave as they sing “Silent Night”  and the kids taking pictures of it with their cameras.

Look, up in the East.  Is that the Star of Bethlehem ?  No, it’s the searchlight on the Sherif’s Dept Helicopter. Get the ****  Out of the Mall, it might fall down !  

Your Homeland Security Tax Dollars At Work.

Sample comments under AJ story (remember, this is wingnuttia Tea Party Land)

I hope the cops stun gunned everyone of them

where was mall security? why should my tax dollars be wasted on Westfield ….  

the mall should have turned on the sprinkler system….  that’s twice now…  

thanks again for the holiday cheer morons. Merry Christmas and a happy laryngitis infection to you all.

all you are asking for is a potential terrorist attack of some kind…  The Viet Cong were experts at using big groups….  there are a lot of al Queda wannabees out there

After an inspection, the mall was declared safe to re open today, according to the city and mall engineers.  http://www.mercurynews.com/top…

Just don’t sing too loud.  We’re not sure about our structural integrity.  

Kucinich’s legislation will return the government’s ability to print money

and take it away from the banks.  Since 1913, the bank’s have had the power.

http://moneyreform.wordpress.c…

“My bill would replace the Federal Reserve System’s dependence on private banks to create credit.  In its place, a Monetary Authority under the Treasury Department would directly inject liquidity into the economy by purchasing much needed public infrastructure repair. Today, we have idle capital, millions of able-bodied but unemployed workers, unused equipment, and record low interest rates. These conditions are the best possible time to make a long-term investment in our nation’s infrastructure.”

Just so simple.  Let the government print the money and spend it into existence like the framers intended.

The concept is so simple.  If you could print money in your garage, would you borrow it from a bank?  Of course not.  So why do governments borrow from banks, when they could just print what they need?  Answer: because the banks own the governments.

This probably won’t pass and Ron Paul is too stupid to understand why this would work, but it is what we need.

Unfortunately, I am sure the banks have a contract out on Kucinich by now.