Category: Other

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange ‘will release damaging secrets if killed or arrested’ | Mail Online: “The founder of WikiLeaks has warned that his supporters are primed to publish a ‘deluge’ of leaked government documents should his activities be curtailed by any country.

Julian Assange has distributed to fellow hackers an encrypted ‘poison pill’ of damaging secrets, thought to include details on BP and Guantanamo Bay.

He believes the file is his ‘insurance’ in case he is killed, arrested or the whistleblowing website is removed permanently from the internet.

Mr Assange – understood to be lying low in Britain – could be arrested by Scotland Yard officers as early as tomorrow.

A warrant for his arrest was issued last Thursday by Swedish prosecutors who want to quiz him over rape allegations.”

 

Abandoned Japanese Theme Park

Vote With Your Dollars | Company Political Contributions from GoodGuide:

Supporters dismissed rape accusations against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange… but the two women involved tell a different story | Mail Online: “It is a story as intriguing and confusing as a Stieg Larsson blockbuster: celebrated internet whistleblower becomes embroiled in a complex sex scandal involving two women, not long after he had masterminded one of the biggest intelligence leaks of all time – against the U.S.

That the action takes place in Sweden, Larsson’s home country, and that the protagonist is the flag-waver for freedom of information Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, provides added piquancy.

Assange, 39, was attending a seminar in Stockholm earlier this month when he found himself facing charges of rape and sexual molestation – charges that were then, amid much confusion, withdrawn and which he strenuously denies. “

 

Online, the censors are scoring big wins – WikiLeaks – Salon.com: “Online, the censors are scoring big wins Attacks on WikiLeaks are part of an attack on free speech, aided by the companies that make up the Web’s backbone”

Wikileaks: Little to stop leaks turning into a flood – Technology – NZ Herald News: “Even if the United States or Sweden succeeds in arresting and imprisoning Julian Assange, there is little his enemies can do to halt the world of online whistle-blowing that he has created.

Assange has spawned an idea, one which will now be copied by volunteers all over the world.

As a web entity, WikiLeaks is virtually impossible to destroy. It is staffed by volunteers who know as much about the methods used to take down a website as those who might be plotting to do just that.

The two ‘distributed denial of service’ attacks on WikiLeaks this week have given us an indication of how they prepare for pre-emptive strikes. As soon as the assaults began, administrators played a game of virtual cat and mouse, moving WikiLeaks on to previously secret backup servers.”

 

Has Wikileaks benefited from the Amazon controversy? Yes and this was intentional.

Since 2007 we have been deliberately placing some of our servers in jurisdictions that we suspected suffered a free speech deficit in order to separate rhetoric from reality. Amazon was one of these cases.

 

LIVE COVERAGE: Julian Assange Holds Online Chat: “”

The party of the rich, by the rich, for the rich | Paul Harris | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk: ” The party of the rich, by the rich, for the rich

Never have Republican values been so brazenly apparent than in holding the unemployed to ransom for the Bush tax cuts”

 

Hidden Room Love: Through the Armoire | Apartment Therapy Chicago: “Who doesn’t love a hidden room? The adult in us, even, is still drawn to this children’s play room that’s just a short step through an unassuming armoire:

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The home’s owner found the old armoire secondhand. He then hired a woodworker to take out the back and install it up against a doorway into his children’s play room. The result is a simple-enough-looking armoire that opens to a hidden room of magic and play. We love this idea because A. it would be so fun and B. it’s a great way to literally hide away playtime clutter. See more of this awesome project at Maple Seed Renovation.

MORE SECRET ROOMS FROM APARTMENT THERAPY:

* Creative Home Engineering: Hidden Passageways!

* Home Hack for Mystery Lovers: Secret Door

* Maybe our love for hidden rooms has something to do with a wish for a larger apartment? Check out Do You (Literally) Dream About a Bigger Apartment?

* Chicago * Regina Yunghans * March 29, 2010 05:45PM

Tags inspiration, playroom, armoire, hideaway “

 

The Spontaneous Creation of New Information: An Interview with James Kent about his new book, Psychedelic Information Theory | h+ Magazine: “Psychedelic drugs hold a strange position within the enhancement community. Many swear by it — finding the alterations in perception induced by these drugs and plants valuable to their creative or scientific work or their explorations of philosophy or their enjoyment of life. Others see scrambled perceptions, irrationality, extreme suggestibility, and lack of focus among psychedelicists and steer clear.

One thing is for certain. If the psychedelics are going to be useful (or more useful) in the enhancement context, we’re going to need to know more about what they’re doing in the brain.”

 

Hackers publish fingerprints of biometrics-touting Minister // Current: ” Hackers in Germany have published thousands of copies of the fingerprints of German minister Wolfgang Schauble, a loud advocate of fingerprint biometrics. Hackers from the Chaos Computer Club lifted a fingerprint from the Interior Minister, printed it on plastic, and distributed it by the thousands with their magazine for anyone who wants to impersonate the Minister at a biometric checkpoint. Short of amputation, a biometric identifier can’t be revoked or changed. Schauble is a big proponent of the use of fingerprints in passports but is not the CCC’s only target. The group has called for help in obtaining the prints of other German officials, including Chancellor Angela Merkel. The CCC’s publication of the fingerprint coincides this week with the presentation of a security researcher who demonstrated a biometric keylogger that can capture digital fingerprints and other digital biometric data as it’s transmitted from a scanning device to the server where the information is processed. The hacker can then analyze and re-use the data to subvert biometric systems and gain entry to secured buildings. “

Throbbing Gristle’s Peter ‘Sleazy’ Christopherson Dies at 55 – Spinner: “Throbbing Gristle founder Peter ‘Sleazy’ Christopherson died in his sleep on Nov 24 at the age of 55.

Born in Leeds, England, the industrial music pioneer was also a founding member of Coil and Psychic TV after Throbbing Gristle disbanded in 1981, as well as recording solo work under the name The Threshold HouseBoys Choir. Most recently he founded SoiSong in 2007 with Ivan Pavlov.

The news was made official today when Throbbing Gristle bandmates Cosey Fanni Tutti and Chris Carter tweeted: ‘Our dearest beautiful Sleazy left this mortal coil as he slept in peace last night.words cannot express our grief.’ Other artists, like Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor also took to Twitter to express their grief: ‘I awake to sad news. RIP Peter Christopherson – friend and huge inspiration.'”

 

Who Shot the Couch? Vintage Bad Fashions: “”

 

[From LN6ub.jpg 900×691 pixels]

[From Saturday Night Live – Christine O’Donnell ad – Video – NBC.com]

Prop 19

With a month to go before California voters decide whether to legalize marijuana, Proposition 19’s opponents have pinned their hopes on desperate arguments that illustrate the intellectual bankruptcy of the prohibitionist position. Unable to offer a persuasive moral justification for continuing to treat marijuana users and suppliers like criminals, the No on 19 crowd has tried to distract voters’ attention with several bright red herrings. Here are five of the smelliest:

[From Pot Prohibitionist Prevarications – Reason Magazine]

Moms Unite to Legalize Marijuana | NBC San Diego: “A group of local mothers who believe legalizing marijuana will help end the war on drugs rallied outside San Diego County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis’ office on Tuesday to encourage her to support Prop 19.

‘Prohibition has failed, and the war on drugs is really a war waged against individuals and their families, so mothers are leading the charge once again to end drug prohibition — marijuana prohibition — just as a group of mothers did in the 1930s to end alcohol prohibition, not because they loved drugs and alcohol but because we love our children,’ said Gretchen Burns Bergman, a co-Founder and executive director of A New PATH (Parents for Addiction Treatment and Healing).

Regulating marijuana would mean that children would not have as much access to the drug and that police would be able to focus on other criminal matters, according to A New PATH.”

 

Neo-Nazi couple find out they’re Jewish – AOL News: ” Two Polish neo-Nazis who were childhood sweethearts and later became skinheads have discovered what for them is a shocking family secret: They’re actually Jewish.

Pawel and Ola, identified only by their first names, are the subject of a CNN documentary about Poles rediscovering their Jewish roots generations after their ancestors hid their religious identities to escape persecution during World War II.

A few years ago, Ola found out from Warsaw’s Jewish Historical Institute that both she and her husband are technically Jews. ‘It was unbelievable — it turned out that we had Jewish roots. It was a shock,’ she said.”

 

Chart Of The Day – The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan: “It’s easy as pie to generalize to millions of people the crimes of a few. We Catholics have had it done to us. And we can have it done to us again. So we should be bloody cautious about insane schemes to do it to 18 million fellow citizens.

The grotesque excuse ‘But the the first amendment is dead, and Islam killed it. There is no ‘freedom of speech’ or ‘freedom of religion’ with the threat of Muslim violence hanging over your head’ is rubbish. Cancelling the rights of 307 million people because you are, by your own admission, afraid is neither patriotism, nor courage, nor Christian fortitude. It is cowardice. And it is extra-special cowardice when you are ready to cancel your most precious national heritage because you are afraid of a speck.”

 

Big Alcohol Donates Money To Fight Legalization Of Pot: “One group that really doesn’t want the legalization of marijuana is big alcohol.

California Beer and Beverage Distributors, a group which includes Anheuser-Busch InBev, donated $10,000 last week to the campaign against Prop. 19 (via HuffPo).

Would marijuana legalization really cut into alcohol consumption?

Probably so. The interest group also includes Heineken, which knows from Amsterdam how legalization affects the market.

The real question is why haven’t pizza vendors and Netflix”

 

[From YouTube – Consequences]

[From YouTube – Parallels: PCRM Public Service Announcement]

[From YouTube – Maher’s 3rd clip: O’Donnell’s Dabblings]

?Napolitano on Arizona:

“I cannot begin to tell you how steamed I am when any government violates first principles of our Constitution. Never before in our modern history has an American government purported to give police the power to stop someone because of their appearance and then require the stopped person to prove a negative on the spot–namely, that he or she is not in the US illegally. In the American justice system, the government must prove everything about the defendant’s behavior; it is a profound violation of due process to impose upon the stopped person the obligation of coming forward with any proof of anything in order to avoid the summary loss of freedom. This is a consistent and unchallenged component of our jurisprudence. Someone should ask Governor Jan Brewer what an illegal alien looks like–she will not be able to answer. As well, can she tell of a person’s immigration status by looking at that person? I can’t imagine that she could answer in the affirmative, yet she has purported to give to police the mental subjective discretion to do so. This is East Germany and the ante-bellum South all in one.”

on Bush/Cheney:

“What President Bush did with the suspension of habeas corpus, with the whole concept of Guantánamo Bay, with the whole idea that he could avoid and evade federal laws, treaties, federal judges and the constitution was blatantly unconstitutional — and in some cases criminal,” Napolitano said. “They should have been indicted. They absolutely should have been indicted. For torturing, for spying, for arresting without warrants. I’d like to say they should be indicted for lying but believe it or not, unless you’re under oath, lying is not a crime.”

on Surveillance:

“Those who believe the Constitution means what it says should tremble at every effort to weaken any of its protections. The Constitution protects all “persons” and all “people” implicated by government behavior. So the government should be required, as it was until FISA, to obtain a 4th Amendment warrant to conduct surveillance of anyone, American or not, in the U.S. or not.”