Route Opened for Donations to Wikileaks

Per WL Central,

After almost two years of fighting an unlawful banking blockade by U.S financial giants VISA and MasterCard, WikiLeaks has announced it is back open for donations.

After WikiLeaks' publications revealing U.S. war crimes and statecraft in 2010, U.S. financial institutions erected a banking blockade against WikiLeaks wholly outside of any judicial or administrative process. The blockade came during a time of substantial economic growth for WikiLeaks but blocked over 95% of donations, costing the organization in excess of USD 20M.

The Wau Holland Transparency Reports for WikiLeaks' finances, released today, illustrate the financial consequences of 18 consecutive months of economic censorship. For the year 2011, the blockade resulted in WikiLeaks' income falling to just 21% of its operating costs.

WikiLeaks has been forced to run on its cash reserves at the Wau Holland Foundation, which have diminished from EUR 800K at the end of December 2010, to less than EUR 100K at the end of June 2012. As the graph shows, WikiLeaks' reserve funds will expire at the current austere rate of expenditure within a few months. In order to effectively continue its mission, WikiLeaks must raise a minimum of EUR 1M immediately.

More at the link above. You can donate here – that's direct from WL Central and should be reliable; I just donated.

Wozniak: Cloud Computing Will Cause "Horrible Problems"

"Wozniak didn't offer much in the way of specifics . . . . [but said, 't]he more we transfer everything onto the web, onto the cloud, the less we're going to have control over it.'" Steve Wozniak was the inventor of the Apple I and Apple II computers.

More at Business Insider. You can find more re- the kinds of problems I worry about by clicking on the label, "Worldbeam," at the bottom of this post.

A Few Headlines: Facebook & Other Big Bros., & the Nasher v. Museum Tower

More at the links.

1. What Facebook Knows. "[O]n 219 million randomly chosen occasions, Facebook prevented someone from seeing a link shared by a friend. Hiding links this way created a control group . . . . the company is not above using its platform to tweak users' behavior. . . . By learning more about how small changes on Facebook can alter users' behavior outside the site, the company eventually 'could allow others to make use of Facebook in the same way' says Marlow."

(Rough translation of image at left: "I give the secrets of big companies to you, and I am a terrorist – Assange; I give your secrets to big companies, and I am Man of the Year – Zuckerberg.")

2. Three NSA Whistleblowers Back EFF's Lawsuit Re- Gov't's Massive Spying on US Civilians. "Three . . . former employees of the National Security Agency (NSA) . . . have come forward to . . . confirm that the NSA has, or is in the process of obtaining, the capability to seize and store most electronic communications passing through its U.S. intercept centers, such as the 'secret room' at the AT&T facility in San Francisco first disclosed by retired AT&T technician Mark Klein in early 2006." (Link added.)

3. US Nat'l Reconnaissance Office's Castoff 'Scopes Beat NASA's Hubbell. "The U.S. government’s secret space program has decided to give NASA two telescopes . . . . [d]esigned for surveillance [and] no longer needed for spy missions . . . . These telescopes will have 100 times the field of view of the Hubble . . . . NASA official Michael Moore gave some hint of what a Hubble-class space telescope might do if used for national security: 'With a Hubble here you could see a dime sitting on top of the Washington Monument.'"

4. A Modest Proposal. In case you missed it, Dallas's latest addition to housing for the 1%, Museum Tower, is frying everything within its line of sight on the Nasher Museum premises. "So [writes Christina Rees in Glasstire], one of Dallas’s more admirable enfant terribles, Erik Schuessler . . . came up with an early solution, and so far I haven’t seen one to beat it." (Link added; click on the images for larger versions.)

Glenn Greenwald on Assange, WL, the Syrian Emails, Etc.

(Thanks to Democracy Now!)

Updates on Assange & Manning

This is not just an infowar; it's a p.r. war. And most of the p.r. machinery is owned by t.p.t.b.

Neither Assange nor Wikileaks has been charged with any violation of any law in any country on the planet, though not for lack of strenuous effort by the authorities. The allegations against Assange fall far short of anything considered illegal in the US or most other countries, and the women who made them did not want him prosecuted.

He offered to be questioned while in Sweden before departing for the UK – he lingered there for over a month for that purpose – and he repeatedly offered to be questioned while in the UK. But although Swedish police and prosecutors recently travelled to Serbia to question a suspect in another case, they refused to interview Assange in the UK. They don't want to question him; they want him in their possession.

Gary McKinnon, wanted in the US since 2002 for allegedly committing the biggest hack of US military computers of all time, walks free in the UK. Shawn Sullivan, a convicted pedophile wanted in the US since 1994 for alleged sexual violations of three underage girls, walks free in the UK.

On May 26, 2012, the Swedish Foreign Minister announced a visit by US Sec. of State Hillary Clinton; she arrived in Sweden on June 2. This was the first visit to Sweden by a US Sec. of State since Henry Kissinger spent one day there in 1976. Clinton remained in Sweden for a week.

It should be noted that Sweden is known to have cooperated with the US's rendition program, and that at least one innocent individual in its custody, Muhammad al-Zery, though never actually charged, was sent to Eqypt for torture and held for two years in jail without ever seeing a judge.

Without Assange and Wikileaks, a great many terrible crimes committed by various governments and corporations around the world might never have been revealed. This is what has precipitated the unprecedented efforts to shut Wikileaks down and gain possession of Assange.

Assange's Position Re- Extradition & Asylum

The excerpts below are from a statement found on WL Central and made yesterday in front of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, and they accurately summarize some of the matters that have been the subjects of misrepresentation most recently.

Yesterday Mr. Assange was served with a letter from the Metropolitan police service requesting that he surrender himself to the Belgravia police station at 11.30 this morning.

Mr Assange has been advised that he should decline to comply with the police request. This should not be considered any sign of disrespect. Under both international and domestic UK law asylum assessments take priority over extradition claims.

The issues faced by Mr. Assange are serious. His life and liberty and the life and liberty of his organization and those associated with it are at stake.

The United States Government has instigated a grand jury investigation against Julian Assange and other “founders or managers” of Wikileaks. Australian diplomats have described this investigation as being of “unprecedented scale and nature." There is irrefutable evidence in the public record of subpoenas being issued and witnesses being compelled to testify against Mr. Assange. WikiLeaks, the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights and other groups have been fighting these subpeonas and other issues arising from the investigation in multiple US courts. US officials have said in open court that the FBI file about the investigation has now reached 42,135 pages. The US department of justice admitted yesterday that its investigation into WikiLeaks proceeds. It is only a matter of time before US authorities begin extradition proceedings against Julian and other leading members of WikiLeaks on various charges including conspiracy to commit espionage. There are credible reports that a sealed indictment has already been made against Mr. Assange. Under US law a sealed indictment can only be made public once Mr. Assange is in custody. For a US official to otherwise acknowledge the existence of a sealed indictment is a criminal offense. The Independent newspaper’s diplomatic correspondent reported that informal talks between the US and Sweden have been conducted.

It should be made clear what would happen if Julian was extradited to the USA. The United Nations special rapporteur for torture, Juan Mendez has formally found that the United States has subjected Julian Assange’s alleged source in this matter, the young soldier Bradley Manning, to conditions amounting to torture. The UN found that the United States subjected Bradley Manning to “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment”. Mr. Manning has been charged by the US government with the capital offense of “aiding the enemy” in relation to his alleged interaction with Mr. Assange. Bradley Manning has been detained without trial for two years and was placed into solitary confinement for 9 months in his cell for 23 hours a day, stripped naked and woken every 5 minutes. His lawyer and support team say these harsh measures were to coerce him into implicating Julian Assange.

So it is clear that there is a legal process in place which will result in taking Julian to the US, which if allowed to succeed would violate his basic rights.

It is accepted by the UK Supreme Court that Julian Assange has not been charged with any criminal offence in Sweden. It is also accepted that he was by told by Swedish authorities that he was free to leave Sweden. And it is also accepted that he has continuously offered to be interviewed by the Swedish authorities here in the UK, should they wish to do so. Although it is normal procedure, Swedish authorities have refused, without reason, to make the 3 hour trip to London and to interview Julian, causing him to be trapped in the UK under virtual house arrest for 561 days and an additional 10 days in solitary confinement – all without charge. Instead they have issued an INTERPOL Red notice and extradition requests.

Julian and his legal team have previously sought assurances from both the UK government and the Swedish government that they will guarantee safe passage after the completion of legal interviews with Mr Assange and both have [refused]. The Swedish executive publicly announced on June 14 that it would detain Mr. Assange in prison without charge.

Once in Sweden under such grave restrictions it would be impossible for Mr. Assange to exercise his asylum rights.

Mr. Assange did not feel safe from US extradition in the UK. We are all too aware of the abuses of the US-UK extradition treaty. Although Mr. Assange has been trapped in the UK, under dangerous circumstances, he at least has had the freedom to apply for political asylum.

It is in this context that Julian has made the difficult decision to seek refuge inside the Ecuadorian Embassy to ask for asylum.

Julian will remain in the Embassy under the protection of the Ecuadorian government while evidence for his application is being assembled and processed.

See also Glenn Greenwald's summary of the situation and Justice for Assange.

Assange would be a fool to allow himself to fall into the hands of the US or any nation subject to its influence. No doubt t.p.t.b. are too smart to dispose of him in a way that might boost his appeal as a martyr; but once in Swedish or US custody, a lot of things could happen. There could be an unfortunate accident, or he could simply be held incommunicado for a very long time.

Here's a recent BBC piece on the situation:



Below are just some of the revelations made thanks to Wikileaks, as of back in Dec., 2010:

How about the needless gunning down by U.S. military forces of a Reuters cameraman and Iraqi innocents shown in the leaked "Collateral Murder" video? Or, limiting inquiry to the U.S. Embassy cables, what about the revelations that six months before the worldwide economic meltdown, the governor of the Bank of England was secretly proposing a bailout of the world's biggest banks funded by nations such as the U.S.; or that the British government secretly assured the U.S. that it had "put measures in place to protect your interest during the UK inquiry into the causes of the Iraq war"; or that the U.S. dismissed British objections about secret U.S. spy flights taking place from the UK, amid British officials' concerns that the UK would be deemed an accomplice to torture; or that, in response to U.S. pressure, the German government assured the U.S. that it would not follow through on its investigation of the CIA's abduction of a German citizen mistakenly identified as a terrorist, Khaled el-Masri; or that the U.S. threatened the Italian government in order to make sure that no international arrest warrants were issued for CIA agents accused of involvement in the abduction of cleric Abu Omar; or that the U.S. sought assurances from the Ugandan government that it would consult the U.S. before using American intelligence to commit war crimes; or that as of 2009, Shell Oil had infiltrated all the main ministries of the Nigerian government; or that pharmaceutical giant Pfizer paid investigators to unearth corruption links to Nigeria's attorney general so as to pressure him to drop legal action for harm to children from a drug trial; or that government corruption in Afghanistan is rampant (viz. an incident last year when then vice-president Ahmad Zia Massoud was stopped in Dubai while carrying $52m in cash); or that the U.S. seeks to manipulate nations opposed to its approach to global warming; or that the U.S. and China worked together to prevent European nations from reaching an agreement at last year's climate summit; or that the Vatican refused to cooperate with an official Irish inquiry into clerical child abuse; or that BP covered up a giant gas leak in Azerbaijan eighteen months before the Gulf of Mexico disaster? To mention just a few items revealed as of 2010-12-21. (UPDATE: See also Glen Mitchell's "Why Wikileaks Matters" for The Nation; the Electronic Frontier Foundation's "The Best of Cablegate: Where Public Discourse Benefited from the Leaks"; Glenn Greenwald's "What Wikileaks revealed to the world in 2010" at Salon; Wikileaks - A timeline of the top leaks at The Telegraph; and to add just one from 2011 so far, "WikiLeaks points to US meddling . . . to keep the [democratically-elected] Jean-Bertrand Aristide out of Haiti." FURTHER UPDATE: See Greg Mitchell's "32 Major Revelations (and Counting)," including the fact that Wikileaks' publications are widely believed to have helped inspire the uprising in Tunisia against a brutal dictator; OpEd News; Greg Mitchell's top Cablegate picks as of his 100th day of blogging the Wikileaks story, here; and Kevin Gosztola's 100 leaks in 100 tweets, here.

Manning Wins Access to US Damage Assessments

Meanwhile, from AFP:

A US military judge ordered prosecutors Monday to share more documents with WikiLeaks suspect Bradley Manning after defense lawyers accused them of hiding information that could help their client's case.

For months, Manning's defense team has demanded access to reports by government agencies, including the CIA, that assessed the effect of the leak of classified documents to the WikiLeaks website.

Manning is accused of passing on a massive trove of files to WikiLeaks but his lawyers believe the reports will show the alleged disclosures had no major effect on the country's national security.

Judge Denise Lind ruled that government prosecutors must provide "damage assessment" reports from the CIA, the State Department, the FBI, the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive (Oncix) and other documents that were relevant for the defense.

I strongly suspect that if the effects of the release were really so damaging to legitimate US interests or to innocents in general, the gov't would by now have managed to identify a few particulars it could afford to make public.

UPDATE: Patrick Cockburn has a fine essay at The Independent:

All governments indulge in a degree of hypocrisy between what they say in public and in private. When democratic openness about general actions and policies is demanded, they pretend they are facing a call for total transparency which would prevent effective government. This deliberate and self-serving inflation of popular demands is usually aimed at the concealment of failure and monopolising power.

* * * * *
Assange and WikeLeaks unmasked not diplomatic reticence in the interests of the smooth functioning of government, but duplicity to justify lost wars in which tens of thousand died. Recent history shows that this official secrecy, frequently aided by "embedding" journalists with armies, works all too well.

In Iraq, in the months before the US presidential election in 2004, foreign embassies in Baghdad all knew and reported that US soldiers were only clinging to islands of territory in a hostile land. But the Bush administration was able to persuade US voters that, on the contrary, it was fighting and winning a battle to establish democracy against the remnants of Saddam Hussein's regime and the adherents of Osama bin Laden.

State control of information and the ability to manipulate it makes the right to vote largely meaningless. That is why people like Julian Assange are so essential to democratic choice.

Much more at the link. Another good one by B.J. Sachs at Counterpunch.

Word for the Day

Per Wikipedia:

Fnord is the typographic representation of disinformation or irrelevant information intending to misdirect, with the implication of a worldwide conspiracy. The word was coined as a nonsensical term with religious undertones in the Discordian religious text Principia Discordia (1965) by Kerry Thornley and Greg Hill, but was popularized by The Illuminatus! Trilogy (1975) of satirical conspiracy fiction novels by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson.^[1]

* * * * *
In these novels, the interjection "fnord" is given hypnotic power over the unenlightened. Under the Illuminati program, children in grade school are taught to be unable to consciously see the word "fnord". For the rest of their lives, every appearance of the word subconsciously generates a feeling of uneasiness and confusion, and prevents rational consideration of the subject. This results in a perpetual low-grade state of fear in the populace. The government acts on the premise that a fearful populace keeps them in power.

In the Shea/Wilson construct, fnords are scattered liberally in the text of newspapers and magazines, causing fear and anxiety in those following current events. However, there are no fnords in the advertisements, encouraging a consumerist society. It is implied in the books that fnord is not the actual word used for this task, but merely a substitute, since most readers would be unable to see the actual word.

To see the fnords means to be unaffected by the supposed hypnotic power of the word or, more loosely, of other fighting words. A more common expression of the concept would be "to read between the lines." The term may also be used to refer to the experience of becoming aware of a phenomenon's ubiquity after first observing it. The phrase "I have seen the fnords" was famously graffitied on a railway bridge (known locally as Anarchy Bridge) between Earlsdon and Coventry (U.K.) city centre throughout the 1980s and 1990s, until the bridge was upgraded. The bridge and the phrase were mentioned in the novel A Touch of Love by Jonathan Coe.

(Some links removed.)

For immediate action (re- Wikileaks/Assange):

Go here to send a message such as the following:

[To:]
President Rafael Correa
Ecuador
Embassy of Ecuador
1050 30th Street NW
Washington, DC 20007
US

I am a citizen of the United States, but above that, I am a citizen of humanity.

Wikileaks' Julian Assange is a hero who has helped expose terrible acts of injustice around the world and has spoken truth to power regardless of nationality or the consequences to himself.

It now falls to those who recognize what's really happening and have the power to help him to do so, for the sake of humanity as well as for Mr. Assange's sake.

I urge you to grant him asylum. Posterity will honor you for your recognition that the time has come to do what's right, and having had the courage to do it.

Sincerely,

Assange's Appeal Rejected by UK Supreme Court

More on the court's case at Raw Story.

As succinctly summarized at WL Central, Assange, who has already been detained for some 500 days without charge, will be extradited to Sweden "for questioning," even though there is no charge against him for violating any law in any country, the two women who alleged sexual misconduct did not want to press charges but only to have him tested for STD's, and

[before leaving for the UK, he] stayed in Sweden for nearly 5 weeks to answer the allegations. Attempts to arrange an interview were made through his lawyer Björn Hurtig, but all proposed dates were refused. When Mr. Assange left Sweden, he did so only after receiving approval from the Swedish prosecutor on the case, Marianne Ny.

Mr. Assange has offered himself to be questioned via telephone or video link from London, which are perfectly legal methods under Swedish law, despite Prosecutor Ny falsely stating otherwise. All offers by Mr. Assange have been rejected.

* * * * *
If Julian Assange is extradited to Sweden he will be immediately placed in prison, in solitary confinement, and incommunicado. There is no bail system in Sweden, nor is there a time limit to detention . . . .

If he is eventually charged, the trial will be held in secret. Sweden's legal system also features a panel of lay judges who hold no formal legal training and are appointed because of their political affiliation.

Mr. Assange then faces further extradition to the United States, where politicians have openly called for his assassination. Sweden holds a "temporary surrender" agreement with the U.S. which allows extradition without the usual lengthy procedure.

More at the links above; and see Business Insider for more background.

TPP Negotiations in Dallas this Week

If you liked PIPA and SOPA, you'll probably love the TPP. But only the participating governments and a handful of multinational corporate insiders know for sure, since the negotiations have been conducted in secret – secret, that is, from the public, though not from the corporate insiders who are basically writing the treaty. Thirty-two legal academics from participating countries have written to protest the shut-out; see here. And Occupiers and others have planned a rally and other actions; see, e.g., here.

Meanwhile, here's an educated guess about what just a few of the proposed treaty's provisions probably include (from Public Knowledge):

• Criminalizing Small Scale Copyright Infringement. Under the TPP, downloading music could be considered a crime. Your computer could be seized as a device that aids this offense and your kid could be sent to jail for downloading. Some of these rules are part of US law. The TPP makes them worse and also imposes similar rules on other countries that don’t have them.

• Kicking People Off the Internet. The TPP would encourage your ISP and the content industry to agree to institute measures such as three strikes—which kicks you off your internet connection after three accusations of copyright infringement—and deep-packet-inspection—which is akin to the USPS opening your mail. While we can not be sure exactly what is in the TPP, these examples are derived from a copy of the TPP’s IP chapter that leaked in February last year, the provisions that were reported to be part of earlier drafts of ACTA, and previous free trade agreements that the US has signed.

• Protecting Incidental Copies. The TPP would provide copyright owners power over “buffer copies.” These are the small copies that computers need to make in the process moving data around. With buffer copy protection the number of transactions for which you would need a license from the copyright owner would increase a great deal. One impact of this could be that the music you stream from services such as Pandora could get much more expensive when rights holders demand higher license fees to compensate them for the “additional” copies.

• Locking out the Deaf and Blind. The TPP would prevent the blind from reading DRM protected ebooks and the deaf from inserting closed captioning onto DRM protected DVDs. In the US, the Copyright Office has made rules in the past that allows the blind to break this DRM. But the continuation of these rules is not a guarantee. And the other TPP countries could fail to make similar rules.

And it's believed there's much more, e.g., provisions that would bar developing countries from buying generic drugs, etc.

As Zachary, OWS-NY librarian put it, "[p]owerlessness is what happens when you sit behind your desk and do nothing. Powerlessness is signing an online petition, or commenting on an article, or forwarding an e-mail."

Google vs. Bloggers

A new user interface is being forced on us bloggers. My and others' experience indicates it's harder to use and offers much less control over the look of posts. Presumably it's also designed to facilitate greater incursions on our privacy. So far, we've been allowed the option to continue to use the old interface, but that's supposed to end soon.

Tenuously related UPDATE: Google's now getting heat from regulators for its collection of people's emails and other private data in the course of its street view photography – invading our privacy without our permission or knowledge – and then lying about it to regulators; more at Wired.

May 1st: General Strike

More info here.

And just in time: if you missed the 99% non-violent action training, you can take it online here.

Occupiers & Others Preparing for General Strike May 1; Noam Chomsky Endorses 99% Spring

Back in the 70's, experts believed that the improvements possible through technology would increase worker productivity to the point that the 40-hour work week would inevitably shrink to 35 or less, and that we'd all have more leisure while enjoying the same or a better standard of living.

Part of that prediction came true: worker productivity in the U.S has exploded since then. Yet instead of having more leisure and greater wealth, our inflation-adjusted incomes have actually dropped, even while our work week has increased to 50 hours and more, and even though, in most families now, both parents work.

What happened? If you read this blog, you already have an idea (e.g., see here or here).

May 1, a holiday in many countries, is the annual commemoration of the 1886 Haymarket Massacre in Chicago, when Chicago police fired on workers during a General Strike for the eight-hour workday. Now, OWS, Occupy Los Angeles, Occupy Chicago, Occupy Oakland, other General Assemblies, Labor organizers, immigrants’ rights groups, artists, faith leaders, and others are preparing for a General Strike on May 1, calling for all of us to take the day away from school and the workplace, to show that we will not continue to accept corporate and governmental systems that exploit the many in order to enrich the few.

More info on the May 1 General Strike here and here.

"99% Spring" is a congruent but separate effort – see my previous post here; more here, here, and here – which has now been endorsed by Noam Chomsky:

Useful Wikileaks Links

My left sidebar's getting too cluttered, so I'm moving most of the Wikileaks links into this post:

~ You can donate to Wikileaks and/or to Assange's defense fund (t.p.t.b. are trying to financially strangle WL.)

~ A website with summary updates on the status of the legal proceedings against Assange, at swedenversusassange.com.

~ A summary of The Case for Wikileaks, with supporting links PLUS (scroll to the bottom) additional useful items and things you can do to help.

~ Ten Things You Need to Know About the Infowar, including Assange's 3-Pronged Strategy per his own writings.

~ Facilities for searching the cables for words or phrases: dazzlepod, cablefinder, leakysearch, cablesearch, and leakspinsauce. UPDATE: Great summary of available facilities, with links, at WL Central.

~ An excellent documentary on Wikileaks, Wikirebels, produced by Sveriges Television.

~ Info about events and protests in support of WL, at WL Central, and a flyer you can distribute, here.

~ Some cool graphics that can help you map the areas addressed by leaked info or provide other info in visual form, here.

And you can find more posts re- Wikileaks here.

What the Stratfor Emails Reveal Re- Efforts Against Wikileaks & Assange

Per Raw Story,

In an email published by WikiLeaks on Tuesday morning, Stratfor vice president Fred Burton writes that his firm has “a sealed indictment on Assange” . . . . In another email, Burton suggests that authorities could “lock him up” by having Assange detained as a material witness. [c-Blog note: the US Dept. of Justice has refused to confirm whether such an indictment has been issued; some have speculated it's because extradition proceedings are still ongoing in the UK, where the law might bar extradition if it were shown that Sweden is likely to permit extradition to a country {the US} where Assange could face capital punishment.]

Burton’s email was sent in response to a discussion about reports that U.S. prosecutors have not been able to hang the case against Pvt. Bradley Manning on any direct contact with Assange [c-Blog note: which would be required in order to show that Assange had violated US law].

* * * * *

Other Stratfor emails that discuss WikiLeaks hint that sexual assault allegations against Assange might not be entirely legitimate. One message shows Stratfor President George Friedman . . . replying to analyst Chris Farnham, who openly questioned the veracity of the charges and alleged that a “close family friend in Sweden who knows the girl that is pressing charges” against the WikiLeaks founder allegedly said “there is absolutely nothing behind it” aside from a pair of eager prosecutors.

(Emphasis supplied.) More at Raw Story.

Dead Drops

"‘Dead Drops’ is an anonymous, offline, peer to peer file-sharing network in public space. USB flash drives are embedded into walls, buildings and curbs accessable to anybody in public space. Everyone is invited to drop or find files on a dead drop. Plug your laptop to a wall, house or pole to share your favorite files and data. Each dead drop is installed empty except a readme.txt file explaining the project. ‘Dead Drops’ is open to participation. If you want to install a dead drop in your city/neighborhood follow the ‘how to’ instructions and submit the location and pictures."

By Aram Bartholl; see deaddrops.com for more, including how to install.

Wikileaks to Reveal: Private Spy Network Paid Gov't Officials et Al. for Profitable Secrets, Etc.

Per a twitter source, Wikileaks will begin publication tomorrow of some 5 million emails from the files of an entity called Stratfor:

Government and diplomatic sources from around the world give Stratfor advance knowledge of global politics and events in exchange for money. The Global Intelligence Files expose how Stratfor has recruited a global network of informants who are paid via Swiss banks accounts and pre-paid credit cards. Stratfor has a mix of covert and overt informants, which includes government employees, embassy staff and journalists around the world.

The material shows how a private intelligence agency works, and how they target individuals for their corporate and government clients. For example, Stratfor monitored and analysed the online activities of Bhopal activists, including the "Yes Men", for the US chemical giant Dow Chemical. The activists seek redress for the 1984 Dow Chemical/Union Carbide gas disaster in Bhopal, India. The disaster led to thousands of deaths, injuries in more than half a million people, and lasting environmental damage.

Per Gizmodo,

Wikileaks says that the emails also reveal the creation of a parallel organization called StratCap. Apparently, this organization would use Stratfor's network of informants to make money in financial markets. Wikileaks claims that the emails show how then-Goldman Sachs Managing Director Shea Morenz and Stratfor CEO George Friedman put StratCap in motion in 2009.

* * * * *
Stratfor CEO has resigned following this clusterfuck. It seems the company's security hasn't been fixed yet, because Anonymous has captured and published his resignation email.

[Emphasis above and below in this post is supplied.] More at the links above.

A press release from the Yes Men notes,

Many of the Bhopal-related emails . . . reveal concern that . . . the Bhopal issue might be expanded into an effective systemic critique of corporate rule, and speculate at length about why this hasn't yet happened – providing a fascinating window onto what at least some corporate types fear most from activists.

"[Bhopal activists] have made a slight nod toward expanded activity, but never followed through on it—the idea of 'other Bhopals' that were the fault of Dow or others," mused Joseph de Feo, who is listed in one online source as a "Briefer" for Stratfor.

"Maybe the Yes Men were the pinnacle. They made an argument in their way on their terms—that this is a corporate problem and a part of the a [sic] larger whole," wrote Kathleen Morson, Stratfor's Director of Policy Analysis.

"With less than a month to go [until the 25th anniversary], you'd think that the major players – especially Amnesty – would have branched out from Bhopal to make a broader set of issues. I don't see any evidence of it," wrote Bart Mongoven, Stratfor's Vice President, in November 2004. . . .

Mongoven even speculates on coordination between various activist campaigns that had nothing to do with each other. "The Chevron campaign [in Ecuador] is remarkably similar [to the Dow campaign] in its unrealistic demand. Is it a follow up or an admission that the first thrust failed? Am I missing a node of activity or a major campaign that is to come? Has the Dow campaign been more successful than I think?" It's almost as if Mongoven assumes the two campaigns were directed from the same central activist headquarters.

Just as Wall Street has at times let slip their fear of the Occupy Wall Street movement, these leaks seem to show that corporate power is most afraid of whatever reveals "the larger whole" and "broader issues," i.e. whatever brings systemic criminal behavior to light. "Systemic critique could lead to policy changes that would challenge corporate power and profits in a really major way," noted Joseph Huff-Hannon, recently-promoted Director of Policy Analysis for the Yes Lab.

(You can see a Yes Man impersonating a Dow Chemical spokesman in an interview with an unwitting BBC here, accepting full responsibility for the 1984 Bhopal disaster.)

Transparency Grenade

"The device is essentially a small computer with a powerful wireless antenna and a microphone. Following detonation, the grenade intercepts local network traffic and captures audio data, then makes the information immediately available online. . . . The grenade form factor may be a great vehicle for artistic expression, but its conspicuous nature makes it slightly impractical – and could see you propelled face first into the pavement by a member of law enforcement. That's why the development of an application for rooted Android devices is already under way. Constantly running in the background on a smartphone, the transparency grenade app is going to provide some of the original device's functionality."

Designed by Julian Oliver, with metal parts crafted by Susanne Stauch. The development process is funded by donations. See transparencygrenade for more info, including how to donate.

Why "Getting Back to Normal" is Not an Option

Great article by Sara Robinson at Alternet, summarizing three important kinds of shift we may now face:

1. Per Joseph Stiglitz, we should stop waiting for the economy to "get back to normal"; it ain't gonna happen, because we face a once-in-a-lifetime shift in the basis for wealth creation, from a system based on manufacturing to one based on information. We have too many manufacturing workers and too few information workers. "Austerity and debt reduction will get us nowhere"; "[t]he current economic crisis is doomed to last exactly as long as we put off building [the workforce] necessary to the new information economy."


2. Per Thomas Homer-Dixon, empires rise and fall based on their control of the dominant energy supply, and the US also faces a shift from oil to renewables. He adduces evidence that no empire has ever survived such a shift, because "the reigning hegemons are always too deeply invested in the current system to recognize the change, let alone repond to it in time."
   
   
3. Per Gar Alperovitz, Jeffery Sachs, and Umair Haque, the real shift relates to the nature of our capitalist system. Haque identifies two kinds of good: those having "thin" value, typified by Big Macs, Hummers, and McMansions, tend to be artificial, unsustainable, and meaningless to anyone but the people who produce and consume them. Those having "thick" value tend to be sustainable and to have potential effects or uses that are moral or that multiply meaningfulness.
   
   Alperovitz points toward the growth in worker- or consumer-owned cooperative businesses and co-ops which, if continued, could result in a massive redistribution of labor and wealth. "America’s 30,000 cooperatives provide over 2 million jobs [, and t]he UN has declared 2012 to be the Year of the Co-Op, in recognition of the fact that nearly half the world’s population now belongs to cooperatives."

The sooner we let go of our assumption that going back to the way things were is desirable or even possible, the more we'll be able to help create the new world that's now arising.

Rebecca Mackinnon: Consent of the Networked

If you don't read her book, at least watch this:

(Another irresistible re-blog from Boing Boing).

Sources on Occupy, Assange

F.w.i.w., based on admittedly hurriedly searches, the best source I've found on the ongoing hearing in the UK Supreme Court on Assange's proposed extradition to Sweden for questioning is The Guardian's blog on Assange; and a good source on ongoing Occupy activity, aside from Tim Poole's livestream coverage, is Greg Mitchell at The Nation.

UPDATE: Apparently the core of Assange's appeal at this point is the argument that the person who issued the warrant for his extradition is not a genuine "judicial official," as required by the European applicable treaty – since the person who issued it was not a judge or other member of the judiciary, but the prosecutor in the case (which is sufficient under Swedish law but not under British law, and it's unclear whether it suffices under the treaty). (Assange recently gave a great summary of the case from his point of view, as well as his current situation, in his interview in Rolling Stone, by the way.) No decision is expected on Assange's appeal for at least a few weeks.