truly odious people like this
informant38
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...But of these sophisms and elenchs of merchandise I skill not...
Milton, Areopagitica
Except he had found the
standing sea-rock that even this last
Temptation breaks on; quieter than death but lovelier; peace
that quiets the desire even of praising it.
Jeffers, Meditation On Saviors
-
31.10.13
Syria has completed the destruction of all of its chemical weapons production and mixing facilities, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said on Thursday.
_
Israeli warplanes struck a Syrian air defense base near the port city of Latakia on Thursday, US official have confirmed to media
Justice for the PayPal WikiLeaks protesters - why DDoS is free speech
:
This is not "hacking". It is protest, and it is speech.Jay Leiderman/Guardian 22/01/13
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The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is thus being used to stifle new and creative forms of online expression. This type of harmless creative protest should be encouraged: our nation was built upon the principles of free speech. If the founders of this great nation saw its laws abused, as when applied to these minor protests, I think they would be shocked and offended.
Our best and brightest should be encouraged to find new methods of expression; direct action in protest must not stifled
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No one is in front of that, whatever it is, no legislator, pundit, artist whatever. These are new creatures. They're bristling with moral outrage, but it's in a new form, and it has new weapons of expression.
In a crazy way it's like the mobilized "Hopeys" of 2008. Encouraging in its intent, dismaying in its direction and co-opted actions and their results.
But it's way bigger now, and it's still creating itself, so co-option isn't a judgment, it's a warning.
What's "it"? In this context the group Anonymous, which is unknowable from the outside. Except by claimed responsibilities.
The danger of that is really great.
But its efficacy, and the encouragement of witnessing it is great as well.
The FBI's done a lot of heinous shit, it's also done a lot of seriously beneficial shit. The danger there is the bad gets in the door on the good's password.
Anonymous needs internal vigilance, I hope they have it. The guy I heard speaking for/from Anonymous on Democracy Now! some months back didn't seem to have much but a sense of his own grandiose cathartic virtual rebel heroic. Which I personally find deeply unsettling.
I've been in the crosshairs of invisible moral heroes for decades. The aesthetic stench of mindless inquisition is not something easily ignored.
On the other hand all we have now is new ways, immediate and unforeseen, because every traditional path toward change is locked down, monitored, and strategically surrounded.
When he released documents to WikiLeaks in 2010, he wanted the American people, and the world, to judge for themselves if the U.S. military was properly valuing human life in Iraq and Afghanistan. As taxpayers who fund that military, we deserve that opportunity.
Pvt. Manning took responsibility for violating miscellaneous regulations covering the use of classified information. For those actions, he has already been punished having spent every day since May 29, 2010, in military confinement.
Pvt. Manning was subjected to approximately nine months of illegal pre-trial punishment at the hands of the Marine command at Quantico, Virginia. Military judge Colonel Denise Lind granted Pvt. Manning 112 days confinement credit for this abuse; however, that is clearly inadequate given the lengthy sentence he was given.
Please, take this opportunity to do what is right. Pvt. Manning has served his punishment and then some. Reduce his sentence to time served, and let him walk free today.
Sincerely,
[Signed]
WikiLeaks
Warning: The "WikiLeaks forum" @wikileaks_forum and site http://wikileaks-forum.com/ are address harvesters and have nothing to do with WikiLeaks
30.10.13
if someone doesn’t know something, or says something wrong, do not shame them, teach them
Monitoring large banks of monitors hour after hour has a debilitating effect on the people doing the observing, and that fatigue can be exploited...
29.10.13
27.10.13
26.10.13
15. Which country is the world’s only democracy where Jews do not enjoy religious freedom?
NICE Security solutions to keep people safe
23.10.13
from rt:
“In a ‘negotiation’ meeting with the president, one GOP House Leader told the president: ‘I cannot even stand to look at you,’
-Sen. Dick Durbin
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Occupy 'pepper-spray cop' awarded $38k settlement... ...workers’ compensation settlement totaling $38,059... The video made it to news outlets around the globe, and activists aligned with the underground Anonymous movement warned him, “Expect our full wrath."There's the downside of the thing which is that "Anonymous" - script kiddies with no ethical governance, and by virtue of their invisibility, unreachable by any means except criticism-at-a-distance or superior tech firepower.
The rest of us have to rely on the internal integrity of whoever/whatever that is. Or suffer the presence of still another bunch of clueless assholes with some of the right ideas and a bunch of the wrong, viz. the NSA, the FBI, and a whole lot of vigilantish clots here and there, whose claims to righteousness never get the clean-up of exposure and debate. Set aside the nature of anonymity means anyone can claim the digital badge and digital gun.
Set aside cowardice in service of moral goals degrades their attainment.
Pike is a pawn in a much larger game that he neither originated nor understands. He makes a far easier safer target than the anonymous social groups that put him there with that mace in his hand.
I share most of what seems to be Anonymous' positions, I like the idea of a power engaged which isn't susceptible to the oppressive force that Pike was employed by, and their work exposing the sexual carnage still so awfully evident.
But this horseshit of threatening people with your immense might is pretty familiar. At some point digital pepper spray is all we're looking at. Just that it's in the hands of anonymous "officers" who are enforcing our values. That's not progress.
My point is Pike's not much more than a can of pepper spray himself - use it, then discard it when it's empty.
Scarcity and Starvation? Venezuelan Food FAQs
Interview, including detailed early biography, with Nicolas Maduro, president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.
"We got another one"Niels Gerson Lohman being spoken of to Canadian border whatevers by US border whatevers
22.10.13
Jay Rosen on Omidyar/Greenwald/Poitras/Scahill
Greenwald lays waste to mainstream journalistic sycophancy. In a mainstream news venue.
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Omidyar's Sunlight Foundation's "Issues We Cover"
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I trust Scahill's work
The Washington Post conflates Snowden/Greenwald and Manning/Wikileaks, and elides entirely the Collateral Murder video. Essentially saying "Nothing new here". Everybody already knew the US was spying on them.
I'm not so sure people already understood the brutal incompetent idiocy of US military practice in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nor that they yet do. Manning's release was a little heavier than "Hey, world, the NSA's reading your email."
21.10.13
disturbing ideas:
That the Snowden leaks are somehow a grab of the momentum created by the Manning/wikileaks releases, and a redirection of that momentum back toward something. What? I don't know. The Guardian's accused - tangentially in a thread about Greenwald - here, of sycophancy toward war-enthusiasts and the financial aristocracy. That there's a dissonance in the editorial practices of Greenwald's beloved employer and his role as champion of transparency and the rights of the surveilled upon. See also in that thread Greenwald's pretty obnoxious sneering contempt for his critics there, which seems to completely disregard legitimate concerns of this kind. And he doesn't respond to the politely asked and serious question of that dissonance, while responding vituperatively to accusations of hinkiness in the timing and amount of document release.Though maybe that's just battle fatigue and frustration with armchair warriors. There's odd discrepancies in the actual volume of documents Snowden delivered. I haven't seen enough other sources and comments to feel confident even in suspicion of plausible doubt maybe.
Greenwald's in the spotlight in a way that makes him media-heroic, he's got a book deal, Snowden's in Russia, sort of in between heroic and fugitive infamy, free (in a foreign country) and living anonymously sort of and certainly not trapped in the Ecuadoran embassy in London. Considering the essential difference in their actions : Snowden snatched and released secrets, Assange received and released secrets. Snowden/Greenwald's revelations so far have mostly pissed off other governments and made some regular folk uneasy, but as far as I know it's all been about the Big Brother eavesdrop. Manning/Wikileaks' revelations showed the intentional atrocities of the US military in brutal graphic detail. There's no blood in S/G's stuff, lots in M/W's.
A book deal for Greenwald versus a movie by Disney about Julian Assange that is clearly a hit piece, if not more accurately described as outright character assassination. And Chelsea Manning's going to be in prison for a long time, unless there's some kind of revolution.
Good son versus bad? Something smells funny.
Maybe it's just my socks.
18.10.13
17.10.13
15.10.13
Tuesday, Dec 21, 2004:
U.S. using chemical weapons against civilians: Iraqi leader- Aniket Alam/The Hindu
a certain vanquishing had taken place:
In any case, the idea that speaking at all on the topic, demanding public space in which to have that debate, is itself an act of complicity with violence, and violence against Israelis, understood as synonymous with Jews, and so violence against Jews, clearly stops the speech with an unspeakable allegation. If you speak, you are in an unspeakable place, have become a Nazi or its moral equivalent (if there is a moral equivalent). It certainly terrifies, but perhaps also it is a linguistic permutation of state terrorism, an assault that stops one in one’s tracks, and secures the continuing operation of the regime and its monopoly on politically intelligible speech.Judith Butler/counterpunch 11.Oct.13
a
geopolitical visionary:
With backcover praise chosen pre-publication by Henry Kissinger, Madeleine Albright, Tony Blair, [Michael] Hayden, the former head of the National Security Agency, the NSA. The primary acknowledgement is to Henry Kissinger.Assange/Golinger/rt 11.Oct.13
11.10.13
the War on Terrorism would be “won in large measure by forces you do not know about, in actions you will not see and in ways you may not want to know about.”
9.10.13
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