WikiLeaks Open Thread
December 3rd, 2010I’m officially exhausted with the WikiLeaks spectacle. I’m now blocking any mention of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange from my feeds and email submissions. Enough already. Wake me up when I can locally search the whole damn thing on my own. This clown act is a bore.
Ok, so these were the stories that caught my eye before I hit the mute button on this thing:
DNS Provider Drops Wikileaks.org
Comment: Again, the TLD/DNS issue is very serious: 1, 2.
wikileaks.ch was working for a while, but it’s down for me now. It doesn’t resolve to anything. Their Swedish “bunker” gear is still operational from the IP as I write this: http://46.59.1.2. They probably have other domain names that work, but I don’t know what they are.
Keep in mind, this is all drama and showmanship. Assange could post the passphrase to the “insurance file” on Twitter at any time if he was interested in putting a stop to this nonsense. The goal, as stated on the FAQ, is to release the documents slowly, so it extends the period of time that they are discussed in the media:
Why not release everything now?
The embassy cables will be released in stages over the next few months. The subject matter of these cables is of such importance, and the geographical spread so broad, that to do otherwise would not do this material justice.
We owe it to the people who entrusted us with the documents to ensure that there is time for them to be written about, commented on and discussed widely in public, something that is impossible if hundreds of thousands of documents are released at once. We will therefore be releasing the documents gradually over the coming weeks and months.
So, the three ring circus continues. Step right up!
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Former WikiLeaks Activists to Launch New Whistleblowing Site
Comment: Good. Hopefully the megalomaniac index will be lower than what we’re seeing with WikiLeaks.
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Comment: It’s going from a three ring circus to cockteasing. No pun intended, given his legal troubles.
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Amazon Dropped WikiLeaks from Their Cloud Computing/Hosting Service
Comment: If Amazon’s other cloud clients weren’t threatened from the DDOS, I’d say that this is a worrying, but hardly a surprising, decision. Anyone who deals with controversial content knows that the terms and conditions are often selectively applied. It happened with me and Google. It happens with PayPal and loads of sites.
Cryptome is hosted by Network Solutions. Cryptome is hosting a mirror of the State Department documents released so far and John Young isn’t having any problem with his host. Search down cryptome.org for “Cryptome latest mirror”.
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That’s all for me, folks. For now, anyway. If you have anything to add, go for it.
Feds Warrantlessly Tracking Americans’ Credit Cards in Real Time
December 3rd, 2010As bad as the information below might seem, it’s actually worse than that.
This is from 2008, but it’s a keeper: The Last Roundup: MAIN CORE.
Via: Wired:
Federal law enforcement agencies have been tracking Americans in real-time using credit cards, loyalty cards and travel reservations without getting a court order, a new document released under a government sunshine request shows.
The document, obtained by security researcher Christopher Soghoian, explains how so-called “Hotwatch” orders allow for real-time tracking of individuals in a criminal investigation via credit card companies, rental car agencies, calling cards, and even grocery store loyalty programs. The revelation sheds a little more light on the Justice Department’s increasing power and willingness to surveil Americans with little to no judicial or Congressional oversight.
For credit cards, agents can get real-time information on a person’s purchases by writing their own subpoena, followed up by a order from a judge that the surveillance not be disclosed. Agents can also go the traditional route — going to a judge, proving probable cause and getting a search warrant — which means the target will eventually be notified they were spied on.
The New Poor: Unemployed, and Likely to Stay That Way
December 3rd, 2010A new cafe opened up out at the coast from where I am here in New Zealand. I was eating there, using my netbook, and the owner offered to get me on the Wi-Fi network he had running in there.
We chatted about our past lives.
That dude did nearly THREE DECADES of wrench turning on systems for large U.S. corporations. I must have looked visibly shocked. I held my coffee mid way between the table and my mouth—which hung open.
“I know,” he said, “I know.”
“Holy shit,” I said.
“I know… I know…”
It was like a group meeting for survivors of a plane wreck. I babbled about the Mother Ship a bit and shook my head a lot. He talked about his last thing and he shook his head a lot.
But, looking at the brightside, there we were. It was a Friday morning and there wasn’t a PHB or a loud server room for miles and miles and miles. I wouldn’t even know where the closest loud server room would be. Whangarei, probably (a bit more than two hours drive).
Anyway, the point is that if you’re doing something because it’s what you’ve always done, and you’re looking at the end of that road, plan to live well on very little, maintain appearances for as long as possible as your draw salary, and when the reaper finally swings the scythe, think of it as a beginning, instead of an end. While you’re still showing up to the grindhouse, make it count. Play it strategically. Play it to win.
As the other slobs around you panic and discuss the best way to get dragged over a hundred miles of unpaved road to get the next shitty job or contract, you’re smiling as you turn in your ID badge and walk away.
The bad news is that this might be your last “real” gig.
That’s also the good news.
Via: New York Times:
The longer people stay out of work, the more trouble they have finding new work.
That is a fact of life that much of Europe, with its underclass of permanently idle workers, knows all too well. But it is a lesson that the United States seems to be just learning.
This country has some of the highest levels of long-term unemployment — out of work longer than six months — it has ever recorded. Meanwhile, job growth has been, and looks to remain, disappointingly slow, indicating that those out of work for a while are likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. Even if the government report on Friday shows the expected improvement in hiring by business, it will not be enough to make a real dent in those totals.
Court Ruling: Monsanto’s Genetically Engineered Sugar Beets Pose Risk of Irreparable Environmental Harm
December 3rd, 2010In case you’re wondering how this is going to wind up (on appeal), here are some hints:
Monsanto Wins as Supreme Court Backs Alfalfa Seed Planting
Change We Can Believe In: Obama Chooses Monsanto Creature, Tom Vilsack, for Secretary of Agriculture
Has Obama Ever Met an Industrial Food Shill He Didn’t Appoint?
Via: AP:
A federal judge in California has ordered the removal from the ground of plants grown to produce seeds for genetically modified sugar beets, citing the potential for environmental harm.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White has again raised questions about the use of genetically modified crops and what will happen if growers aren’t allowed to plant GMO seeds.
About 95 percent of the sugar beet crop has been genetically modified to resist the weed killer Roundup. The crop provides roughly half of the nation’s sugar supply.
In his decision, White cited, “a significant risk of environmental harm.”
White ruled in a lawsuit filed by environmental groups challenging a decision in September by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services to issue permits to seed companies to plant sugar beet stecklings. The young plants produce seeds that then are planted to grow sugar beets.
The agency decided to issue the permits despite an August ruling by White that put a hold on future planting of genetically modified sugar beets. The ruling allowed this year’s crop to be harvested and processed, but the current seed crop was not to be planted until the USDA reviewed the effects the crops could have on other food.
In his order Tuesday, White wrote that the environmental groups had shown that the genetically modified sugar beets could contaminate other crops, including through cross-pollination.
“The likely environmental harm is irreparable,” White wrote.
DynCorp and Afghan “Dancing Boys”
December 3rd, 2010Well, well, well.
Related Search: DynCorp Human Trafficking
Via: Guardian:
A scandal involving foreign contractors employed to train Afghan policemen who took drugs and paid for young “dancing boys” to entertain them in northern Afghanistan caused such panic that the interior minister begged the US embassy to try and “quash” the story, according to one of the US embassy cables released by WikiLeaks.
In a meeting with the assistant US ambassador, a panicked Hanif Atmar, the interior minister at the time of the episode last June, warned that the story would “endanger lives” and was particularly concerned that a video of the incident might be made public.
The episode helped to fuel Afghan demands that contractors and private security companies be brought under much tighter government control. However, the US embassy was legally incapable of honouring a request by Atmar that the US military should assume authority over training centres managed by DynCorp, the US company whose employees were involved in the incident in the northern province of Kunduz.
There is a long tradition of young boys dressing up as girls and dancing for men in Afghanistan, an activity that sometimes crosses the line into child abuse with Afghans keeping boys as possessions.
Although rarely discussed or criticised in Afghanistan, it is conceivable that the involvement of foreigners could have turned into a major public scandal. Atmar himself warned about public anger towards contractors, who he said “do not have many friends” and said they needed far greater oversight.
He also said tighter control was needed over Afghan employees of such companies as well.
“He was convinced that the Kunduz incident, and other events where mentors had obtained drugs, could not have happened without Afghan participation,” the cable said.
Two Afghan policemen and nine other Afghans were arrested as part of investigations into a crime described by Atmar as “purchasing a service from a child”, which the cable said was against both sharia law and the civil code.
Atlanta: Hundreds Line Up For Help Heating Homes
December 3rd, 2010Via: Atlanta Journal Constitution:
As metro Atlanta’s temperatures grow colder, the demand for heat is, well, heating up.
A day after hundreds of people queued up outside a Marietta community center to apply for assistance with heat and power bills, hopeful applicants began lining up again around midnight, waiting in the sub-freezing temperatures for the doors to open Thursday morning.
This time, however, officials let those in line come into the Mansour Center on Roswell Street an hour early at 7:30 and get relief from temperatures that dropped to 27 degrees.
NASA Finds New Arsenic-Fed Life Form
December 2nd, 2010300 sextillion stars in the universe and people are surprised by this development?
Via: PC World:
NASA’s announcement Thursday afternoon has shown that alien life might have been under scientists’ noses all along. A press conference with a team of researchers revealed that alien life forms could exist in drastically different forms than previously thought.
Two years of study at Mono Lake near Yosemite National Park in California have yielded a type of bacteria that thrives on the toxic chemical arsenic. The elements necessary to support life on Earth are carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur. However, this discovery refutes the previously accepted idea that extraterrestrial life forms would be made out of these same DNA building blocks.
“We know that some microbes can breathe arsenic, but what we’ve found is a microbe doing something new – building parts of itself out of arsenic,” said Felissa Wolfe-Simon, a NASA astrobiology research fellow and lead scientist on the study. “If something here on Earth can do something so unexpected, what else can life do that we haven’t seen yet?”
Nigeria to Charge Dick Cheney in Pipeline Bribery Case
December 2nd, 2010Via: Bloomberg:
Nigeria will file charges against former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and officials from five foreign companies including Halliburton Co. over a $180 million bribery scandal, a prosecutor at the anti-graft agency said.
Indictments will be lodged in a Nigerian court “in the next three days,” Godwin Obla, prosecuting counsel at the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, said in an interview today at his office in Abuja, the capital. An arrest warrant for Cheney “will be issued and transmitted through Interpol,” the world’s biggest international police organization, he said.
Peter Long, Cheney’s spokesman, said he couldn’t immediately comment when contacted today and said he would respond later to an e-mailed request for comment.
Obla said charges will be filed against current and former chief executive officers of Halliburton, including Cheney, who was CEO from 1995 to 2000, and its former unit KBR Inc., based in Houston, Texas; Technip SA, Europe’s second-largest oilfield- services provider; Eni SpA, Italy’s biggest oil company; and Saipem Construction Co., a unit of Eni. Obla didn’t identify the former officials whom he said held office when the alleged bribes were paid.
Fed Withholds Collateral Data for $885 Billion in Financial-Crisis Loans
December 2nd, 2010“Collateral.” *wink*
Via: Bloomberg:
The Federal Reserve withheld details on individual securities pledged as collateral by recipients of $885 billion in central bank loans, denying taxpayers a measure of the risks they faced from its emergency aid.
No More Unemployment Checks for Two Million Americans by End of December
December 2nd, 2010Via: USA Today:
About 2 million Americans stand to lose their unemployment checks by the end of December after Congress failed to extend benefits Tuesday, threatening to crimp consumer spending in a fragile recovery and critical holiday shopping season.
A motion by Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., to pass an extension on a voice vote fell short.
“Taking away these benefits only places greater strain on out-of-work Americans already struggling to put food on the table especially during this holiday season,” said Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., author of a bill to extend the benefits for a year.
The National Employment Law Project (NELP) estimates extending benefits for a year would cost about $56 billion. But economists say they provide an outsized economic lift, because the unemployed spend cash on necessities rather than socking it away.
