I am glad you took the time to read up on it - it is extremely difficult to tell people. They all just think your trolling. "Besides, I did not see it reported on in the [insert favorite mainstream press], It can't be true".
Obama is now arguing they need the ability to assassinate Americans, but keep details of why and who a complete "state secret" and free from any oversight. If that is not the Orwellian future right now, then I don't know what is... Broader internet wiretaps pale in comparison to this. For those that think this might just be for those Americans congress labels as a "terrorist" - then this politically expedient death might give you pause
So one of them, in a playful manner, sent the first batch of identification details through the mail, on some printed sheets of paper. Good luck to try automating that.:)
They should also print them out as CAPTCHAS - to discourage automated OCR scanning. If all French ISP's did this then the workload for 150K IP's a day would land squarely back on the shoulders of the copyright holders doing blanket requests.
An Australian University named after Rupert Murdochs grandfather Walter is "developing algorithms to simulate 'free thinking' " - am I day dreaming???! If they train them on Murdochs Fox News and Wall St Journal - then it is a clear case of crap in - crap out.
To be fair to the University or at least some of it's lecturers, they are not at all pleased with the state of Newspaper "Journalism" either. Even going as far as wanting to renaming themselves to "Walter Murdoch Uni" to distance themselves from that black sheep of the family Rupert.
Certainly the CIA/US color revolutions are much better organized (and relatively peaceful) relative to the older methods of getting a regime changed (usually to secure rights to mineral and other natural resources, like the previous Congo/Lumumba reference or many others you could choose from.
What makes the CIA organized "color revolution" overthrow of the old Georgia government interesting is that without Georgia "we" (as in our oil companies) may not have been interested in Afghanistan - and if we were, Europe would not be interested in participating. Europe and the US are "investing" (money, lives, you name it) in the Afghan war so that the US can sell the oil through Afghan/Georgia pipeline into Europe. Profit!
lot of other countries such as Iran and China, apparently consider the free exchange of information to be an information technology threat.
WTF are they going on about - have they been living under a rock?! The greatest current threats to the free exchange of information via the internet are coming from the US, UK, Canada and Australia. All China, Iran etc can do is limit their own population - much less threaten the wider internet like these "Spreading Democracy" countries are.
Vote, encourage others to vote - for anyone, just get out and vote. Don't buy into the bullshit that is often repeated: "my vote does not matter, anyway" - this phrase is music to radical-wing political parties ears for it means that their small band of supporters, who will certainly be voting, will have a great piece of the smaller voting pie. With voting rates trending lower as laws get more draconian - the media of various countries has sold their populations on apathy (more on this here).
Create websites to profile politicians, track what politicians say vs what they (and gov employees) actually do on the ground. Make funny viral video "ad's" encouraging young people to vote, how it is their one and only opportunity every few years to actually change shit. Instruct and show people how easy it is to vote.... the list of creative things that can be done is long here.
Apathy is the enemy and the mainstream media has helped to paralyzed the population well with it... making yet another public forum to discuss it will get you lost endlessly debating hypotheticals. Instead, pick a well defined task like the ones I have suggested above, start the project and try to get others to join up to help.
In other news today: 1 out of 7 Americans living below the poverty line (43.6 million Americans whose families). Big news making the rounds on the world scene - converting the US into the laughing stock of the "first world". Someone should have stopped that from leaking out of the US Census Bureau too, damn it
And note well that this is the same government that routinely pleads poverty when the suggestion of national health care comes up.
Tax payer funds (direct and the much larger indirect money supply inflation is not destined for mating US society better, silly. It goes to things like bailing out banks when the fail business 101, building tanks and stuff.
That doesn't mean the things he says to the press are true or complete.
I agree. But lucky for us Wikileaks organization makes it policy to release the FULL source material:
"What makes WikiLeaks different than mainstream media outlets is that they always release the source materials. They also provide up-front disclosure of any slant or intention if they edit. Assange made it clear that is was not enough to release the raw documents. He described how source material needs at least a summary for journalists to pick it up. Otherwise it falls into the gutter and is buried. He stated the need for some journalistic work by WikiLeaks:
When the material is more complexespecially military material which has lots of acronymsit’s not even enough to do a summary . Unlike other organizations, we always release the full source material at the same time. The summary, some sort of introduction or articles we do are based on the source material. So, everything we do is like science. It is checkable, independently checkable because the information which has informed our conclusions is there, just like scientific papers which are based on experimental data and must make that experimental data available to other scientists and the public if they want their papers to be published. (Assange, April 18, 2010)"
From Wikileaks the global 4th estate.
If only the vast majority of US Media could be so honest and accountable to the general public, instead of hiding behind half truth's, hidden agendas, omissions of facts, spin and rhetoric.
Playing the devils advocate... the tragedy that was 9/11 is up-to what, ~20K deaths and counting from over 90 countries. That figure puts the tragedy at around the annual death toll for sexually transmitted diseases on the US death toll lists. I don't think I am alone in saying that it would have been more positive and beneficial for the average American to prevent more lives being lost, decrease the US led future terrorist recruitment drive and instead invest several trillion US dollars into the other top 10 preventable diseases on that list that are going to kill Americans every year, anyay.
I just don't like to be immersed to my neck in the cesspit of SPAM and other duplicity that the internet so uniquely enables.
The real world has crime - even turning a country into some kind of controlled Stazi state in the name of defending against "crime" will not change that. Most of us are not prepared to live in a police state/baby pen internet under the (fake) pretense of knocking a few percentage points off the crime stats or child porn bogymen population.
Apart from that - what makes you think that anonymity makes it possible to hold governments and big business to account? All this is just a dummy; something to keep potential troublemakers occupied with thundering impotently on their soapboxes instead of organizing something more worthwhile.
As for holding governments and big business to account here is one example (Disclaimer: In My Opinion) on an issue that indirectly affects most Americans in a big way : The action, enabled by anonymous open and free internet access. And here we are seeing the reaction: Two influential think tanks have seen the writing on the wall - two think tanks that have a history of being ahead of the curve in changes to government policy. Sure many here will argue that one is not related to the other in any way - that it was always the plan from the start - but that would just be unverifiable opinion, the same as mine is. My money is on the massive amount of new factual data enabling better informed decisions to be made - as should always be the case in a true democracy - something that would not have been possible if we did not have an open anonymous internet. Apparently, I am not alone in the above opinion, professionals who know better than most share it: "Afghanistan intelligence flawed, says ex-CIA man". All due to open anonymous and free internet access. Here's to apposing any attempt to messing with it by grubby little politician hands...
I discarded ideology decades ago when I realized what a mug's game it was.
Sure no problem - but do you really want to discard "news" backed by independently verifiable facts while you were at it? That is all most of the "we" in the "you lot out there" you are referring to want - news along with the source material free of spin... pretty simple really, and nothing to do with ideology. We can all pile our own ideology on top afterward.
Old Media is mostly echo spin chamber devoid of any verifiable facts - the "polarization" you observe on the internet is the opposite beginning to seep through - message from outside the echo chamber trickling through in polar opposite to the mainstream old media rhetoric. If it is quality online news then it references every source that the message was based on. Of course this does not mean they are all reliable or trustworthy - the majority still are not - which is why "we" are all calling for the source material along with our news summary soundbites. Here is one overview of the "new media" landscape, one of many - but this one happens to include more on your point of view that the internet is nothing more than a bunch of rabid ideology.
Backfire, true: It will just be held up as an excuse to Kill Switch the internet, remove anonymous access - China's state media is already calling for teaming up with the US to remove anonymous internet access. Sure any registration system will be far from a perfect net - full of holes and work around's for the technically adept - but they only have to get the majority to use it and it will be enough to destroy the Internets potential to bring true accountability and openness to our respective governments. Something that our traditional media channels have utterly failed to do.
"The ruling handed a major victory to the Obama administration in its effort to advance a sweeping view of executive secrecy power."
"The distorted, radical use of the state secret privilege -- as a broad-based immunity weapon for compelling the dismissal of entire cases alleging Executive lawbreaking, rather than a narrow discovery tool for suppressing the use of specific classified documents -- is exactly what the Bush administration did to such extreme controversy."
Rulings like this passed with little to no media coverage[1] show that the US is more little down the slippery slope to our Orwellian future. And people here are worried about wikileaks? The mind boggles.
[1] Slashdot posts old old news on Wikileaks instead - like there was ever a doubt that the remaining documents will be published
Add the Australian prime ministers to that list... all in return for US led trade agreements that only end up shafting ordinary Australians whilst greasing the palms of a select few. Let's hope future elections have more independents - hung parliaments are the only thing preventing the UK/Aussie Prime Ministers from getting down on both knees at a time, it seems.
By supporters, do you mean any media organization that likes sensationalist headlines? Does a heading: "Wikileaks Blames CIA" automatically make that media outlet a "supporter" in your opinion?
Here, I'll quote back the relevant part of my post you're ignoring:
issued in the context of the news coverage over wikileaks' publication of the Afghan War Diaries?
Not ignoring it - it is hard to stretch that into your claim that he directly implied what your claiming he implied. Since your handle is "Americano", this AC post below is relevant:
Why could he not be implying the Swedish government for example - it has a lot to lose from the Afghan War Diaries as well, and he was in Sweden at the time. Like it or not, the world does not just revolve around the US - there are troops from other nations in Afghanistan as well, you know.
Obviously, that these charges are part of a smear campaign against him, orchestrated by the US government,
intellectually dishonest, indeed. You just tacked on the "orchestrated by the US government" part yourself there, didn't you?! If your so convinced that he directly implied it was the CIA/US government and not just you following propaganda talking points - then [CITATION NEEDED]. I'll make it easy: Wikileaks twitter feed links all Assange interviews for you to find a reference. From the interviews I have watched at no place did he imply directly or indirectly that it was the CIA/US Gov. He did say that the Aussie government warned him of dirty tricks - whether you believe that or not, or that they meant "The CIA is going to use dirty tricks" is upto your imagination, and little else.
We now have 4 independents holding the major parties hostage for their pet causes
You have 4 independents who do not just toe the party line and do as their told. You also have two entrenched parties that are not used to being told they cannot do something.
...will absolutely decimate the economy.
As opposed to the economic decimation that has occurred under the watch of both Labour and Libral. You might be right - but the Greens deserve the benefit of the doubt. The old "they will shut off the coal mines, cold turkey style" is a often repeated scaremongering tactic used to persuade the less intellectually inclined to steer their votes away from the Green's - it never has a citation to any actual Policy saying to do what is being claimed, sold turky kill the economy style.
Labour/Liberal on the other hand do not deserve that benefit - they have well demonstrated their willingness to support international policies with our "allies" directly implicated in leading up to the world economic crisis.
Until now, they've never had the power to push them through, but with a hung parliament...
...with a hung parliament, Aussies will not just be doing what Labour/Liberal say they are doing with no debate. These two spoilt parties will now have to make trade-off's, negotiate and above all something new to them - seriously debate matters democratic style. A very very good thing and how a democracy should work, unlike what we have seen under the two party system we have had upto now (WorkChoices without debate, indeed).
Unfortunately, our political system just isn't setup for this.
True - the two party system did not require political trade offs or above all, serious debate. They did what they liked debate be damned. Now they have to do it that they (and their corporate press engines) are not liking it one bit - all thanks to just 4 independents - here's hoping for far more independents in the next election to bring even more balance to the political process, and dilute power out of the few hands that been holding it.
Slashdot Mirror
I am glad you took the time to read up on it - it is extremely difficult to tell people. They all just think your trolling. "Besides, I did not see it reported on in the [insert favorite mainstream press], It can't be true".
...what's to stop whoever is in the White House from 'disappearing' outspoken people they disagree with, without breaking the law?
Legalized assassination of Americans you mean? In fact, they are already doing it - it's in court right now.
Obama is now arguing they need the ability to assassinate Americans, but keep details of why and who a complete "state secret" and free from any oversight. If that is not the Orwellian future right now, then I don't know what is... Broader internet wiretaps pale in comparison to this. For those that think this might just be for those Americans congress labels as a "terrorist" - then this politically expedient death might give you pause
.
So one of them, in a playful manner, sent the first batch of identification details through the mail, on some printed sheets of paper. Good luck to try automating that. :)
They should also print them out as CAPTCHAS - to discourage automated OCR scanning. If all French ISP's did this then the workload for 150K IP's a day would land squarely back on the shoulders of the copyright holders doing blanket requests.
An Australian University named after Rupert Murdochs grandfather Walter is "developing algorithms to simulate 'free thinking' " - am I day dreaming???! If they train them on Murdochs Fox News and Wall St Journal - then it is a clear case of crap in - crap out.
To be fair to the University or at least some of it's lecturers, they are not at all pleased with the state of Newspaper "Journalism" either. Even going as far as wanting to renaming themselves to "Walter Murdoch Uni" to distance themselves from that black sheep of the family Rupert.
Certainly the CIA/US color revolutions are much better organized (and relatively peaceful) relative to the older methods of getting a regime changed (usually to secure rights to mineral and other natural resources, like the previous Congo/Lumumba reference or many others you could choose from.
What makes the CIA organized "color revolution" overthrow of the old Georgia government interesting is that without Georgia "we" (as in our oil companies) may not have been interested in Afghanistan - and if we were, Europe would not be interested in participating. Europe and the US are "investing" (money, lives, you name it) in the Afghan war so that the US can sell the oil through Afghan/Georgia pipeline into Europe. Profit!
lot of other countries such as Iran and China, apparently consider the free exchange of information to be an information technology threat.
WTF are they going on about - have they been living under a rock?! The greatest current threats to the free exchange of information via the internet are coming from the US, UK, Canada and Australia. All China, Iran etc can do is limit their own population - much less threaten the wider internet like these "Spreading Democracy" countries are.
Vote, encourage others to vote - for anyone, just get out and vote. Don't buy into the bullshit that is often repeated: "my vote does not matter, anyway" - this phrase is music to radical-wing political parties ears for it means that their small band of supporters, who will certainly be voting, will have a great piece of the smaller voting pie. With voting rates trending lower as laws get more draconian - the media of various countries has sold their populations on apathy (more on this here).
Create websites to profile politicians, track what politicians say vs what they (and gov employees) actually do on the ground. Make funny viral video "ad's" encouraging young people to vote, how it is their one and only opportunity every few years to actually change shit. Instruct and show people how easy it is to vote.... the list of creative things that can be done is long here.
Apathy is the enemy and the mainstream media has helped to paralyzed the population well with it... making yet another public forum to discuss it will get you lost endlessly debating hypotheticals. Instead, pick a well defined task like the ones I have suggested above, start the project and try to get others to join up to help.
In other news today: 1 out of 7 Americans living below the poverty line (43.6 million Americans whose families). Big news making the rounds on the world scene - converting the US into the laughing stock of the "first world". Someone should have stopped that from leaking out of the US Census Bureau too, damn it
And note well that this is the same government that routinely pleads poverty when the suggestion of national health care comes up.
Tax payer funds (direct and the much larger indirect money supply inflation is not destined for mating US society better, silly. It goes to things like bailing out banks when the fail business 101, building tanks and stuff.
That doesn't mean the things he says to the press are true or complete.
I agree. But lucky for us Wikileaks organization makes it policy to release the FULL source material:
"What makes WikiLeaks different than mainstream media outlets is that they always release the source materials. They also provide up-front disclosure of any slant or intention if they edit. Assange made it clear that is was not enough to release the raw documents. He described how source material needs at least a summary for journalists to pick it up. Otherwise it falls into the gutter and is buried. He stated the need for some journalistic work by WikiLeaks:
When the material is more complexespecially military material which has lots of acronymsit’s not even enough to do a summary . Unlike other organizations, we always release the full source material at the same time. The summary, some sort of introduction or articles we do are based on the source material. So, everything we do is like science. It is checkable, independently checkable because the information which has informed our conclusions is there, just like scientific papers which are based on experimental data and must make that experimental data available to other scientists and the public if they want their papers to be published. (Assange, April 18, 2010)" From Wikileaks the global 4th estate.
If only the vast majority of US Media could be so honest and accountable to the general public, instead of hiding behind half truth's, hidden agendas, omissions of facts, spin and rhetoric.
Playing the devils advocate... the tragedy that was 9/11 is up-to what, ~20K deaths and counting from over 90 countries. That figure puts the tragedy at around the annual death toll for sexually transmitted diseases on the US death toll lists. I don't think I am alone in saying that it would have been more positive and beneficial for the average American to prevent more lives being lost, decrease the US led future terrorist recruitment drive and instead invest several trillion US dollars into the other top 10 preventable diseases on that list that are going to kill Americans every year, anyay.
My apologies - sincerely.
I just don't like to be immersed to my neck in the cesspit of SPAM and other duplicity that the internet so uniquely enables.
The real world has crime - even turning a country into some kind of controlled Stazi state in the name of defending against "crime" will not change that. Most of us are not prepared to live in a police state/baby pen internet under the (fake) pretense of knocking a few percentage points off the crime stats or child porn bogymen population.
Apart from that - what makes you think that anonymity makes it possible to hold governments and big business to account? All this is just a dummy; something to keep potential troublemakers occupied with thundering impotently on their soapboxes instead of organizing something more worthwhile.
As for holding governments and big business to account here is one example (Disclaimer: In My Opinion) on an issue that indirectly affects most Americans in a big way : The action, enabled by anonymous open and free internet access. And here we are seeing the reaction: Two influential think tanks have seen the writing on the wall - two think tanks that have a history of being ahead of the curve in changes to government policy. Sure many here will argue that one is not related to the other in any way - that it was always the plan from the start - but that would just be unverifiable opinion, the same as mine is. My money is on the massive amount of new factual data enabling better informed decisions to be made - as should always be the case in a true democracy - something that would not have been possible if we did not have an open anonymous internet. Apparently, I am not alone in the above opinion, professionals who know better than most share it: "Afghanistan intelligence flawed, says ex-CIA man". All due to open anonymous and free internet access. Here's to apposing any attempt to messing with it by grubby little politician hands...
I discarded ideology decades ago when I realized what a mug's game it was.
Sure no problem - but do you really want to discard "news" backed by independently verifiable facts while you were at it? That is all most of the "we" in the "you lot out there" you are referring to want - news along with the source material free of spin... pretty simple really, and nothing to do with ideology. We can all pile our own ideology on top afterward.
Old Media is mostly echo spin chamber devoid of any verifiable facts - the "polarization" you observe on the internet is the opposite beginning to seep through - message from outside the echo chamber trickling through in polar opposite to the mainstream old media rhetoric. If it is quality online news then it references every source that the message was based on. Of course this does not mean they are all reliable or trustworthy - the majority still are not - which is why "we" are all calling for the source material along with our news summary soundbites. Here is one overview of the "new media" landscape, one of many - but this one happens to include more on your point of view that the internet is nothing more than a bunch of rabid ideology.
Backfire, true: It will just be held up as an excuse to Kill Switch the internet, remove anonymous access - China's state media is already calling for teaming up with the US to remove anonymous internet access. Sure any registration system will be far from a perfect net - full of holes and work around's for the technically adept - but they only have to get the majority to use it and it will be enough to destroy the Internets potential to bring true accountability and openness to our respective governments. Something that our traditional media channels have utterly failed to do.
Terrence Moonseed, is that you?
Improve accountability? No, all this will do is force the decision-making process further away from the prying eyes of public scrutiny.
How I wish you were wrong - but this weeks major, (incredible, unbelievable, and under-reported) news proves you very very right....
Well said, but unfortunately this weeks ruling means it is only going to get worse , much much worse..
Quotes from above:
"The ruling handed a major victory to the Obama administration in its effort to advance a sweeping view of executive secrecy power."
"The distorted, radical use of the state secret privilege -- as a broad-based immunity weapon for compelling the dismissal of entire cases alleging Executive lawbreaking, rather than a narrow discovery tool for suppressing the use of specific classified documents -- is exactly what the Bush administration did to such extreme controversy."
Rulings like this passed with little to no media coverage[1] show that the US is more little down the slippery slope to our Orwellian future. And people here are worried about wikileaks? The mind boggles.
[1] Slashdot posts old old news on Wikileaks instead - like there was ever a doubt that the remaining documents will be published
Add the Australian prime ministers to that list... all in return for US led trade agreements that only end up shafting ordinary Australians whilst greasing the palms of a select few. Let's hope future elections have more independents - hung parliaments are the only thing preventing the UK/Aussie Prime Ministers from getting down on both knees at a time, it seems.
By supporters, do you mean any media organization that likes sensationalist headlines? Does a heading: "Wikileaks Blames CIA" automatically make that media outlet a "supporter" in your opinion?
Juba: "You have a great name. You must kill your name before he kills you.". We are already seeing attacks on the name. The last thing any power base/organization being eroded away by wikileaks wants is a martyr strengthening support for Wikileaks after any assassination.
Here, I'll quote back the relevant part of my post you're ignoring:
Not ignoring it - it is hard to stretch that into your claim that he directly implied what your claiming he implied. Since your handle is "Americano", this AC post below is relevant:
Why could he not be implying the Swedish government for example - it has a lot to lose from the Afghan War Diaries as well, and he was in Sweden at the time. Like it or not, the world does not just revolve around the US - there are troops from other nations in Afghanistan as well, you know.
Obviously, that these charges are part of a smear campaign against him, orchestrated by the US government,
intellectually dishonest, indeed. You just tacked on the "orchestrated by the US government" part yourself there, didn't you?! If your so convinced that he directly implied it was the CIA/US government and not just you following propaganda talking points - then [CITATION NEEDED]. I'll make it easy: Wikileaks twitter feed links all Assange interviews for you to find a reference. From the interviews I have watched at no place did he imply directly or indirectly that it was the CIA/US Gov. He did say that the Aussie government warned him of dirty tricks - whether you believe that or not, or that they meant "The CIA is going to use dirty tricks" is upto your imagination, and little else.
All a great diversion from the real jaw dropping news...
The internet is already secure for me, when using [Insert Technology Here]
I think that is missing the point somewhat - It is not secure against you speaking your mind on their corruption and organizing against it.
We now have 4 independents holding the major parties hostage for their pet causes
You have 4 independents who do not just toe the party line and do as their told. You also have two entrenched parties that are not used to being told they cannot do something.
...will absolutely decimate the economy.
As opposed to the economic decimation that has occurred under the watch of both Labour and Libral. You might be right - but the Greens deserve the benefit of the doubt. The old "they will shut off the coal mines, cold turkey style" is a often repeated scaremongering tactic used to persuade the less intellectually inclined to steer their votes away from the Green's - it never has a citation to any actual Policy saying to do what is being claimed, sold turky kill the economy style.
Labour/Liberal on the other hand do not deserve that benefit - they have well demonstrated their willingness to support international policies with our "allies" directly implicated in leading up to the world economic crisis.
Until now, they've never had the power to push them through, but with a hung parliament...
...with a hung parliament, Aussies will not just be doing what Labour/Liberal say they are doing with no debate. These two spoilt parties will now have to make trade-off's, negotiate and above all something new to them - seriously debate matters democratic style. A very very good thing and how a democracy should work, unlike what we have seen under the two party system we have had upto now (WorkChoices without debate, indeed).
Unfortunately, our political system just isn't setup for this.
True - the two party system did not require political trade offs or above all, serious debate. They did what they liked debate be damned. Now they have to do it that they (and their corporate press engines) are not liking it one bit - all thanks to just 4 independents - here's hoping for far more independents in the next election to bring even more balance to the political process, and dilute power out of the few hands that been holding it.