Secret Erik Prince/Blackwater Tape Exposed

Erik Prince, the reclusive owner of the Blackwater empire, rarely gives public speeches and when he does he attempts to ban journalists from attending and forbids recording or videotaping of his remarks. On May 5, that is exactly what Prince is trying to do when he speaks at DeVos Fieldhouse as the keynote speaker for the “Tulip Time Festival” in his hometown of Holland, Michigan. He told the event’s organizers no news reporting could be done on his speech and they consented to the ban. Journalists and media associations in Michigan are protesting this attempt to bar reporting on his remarks.

Despite Prince’s attempts to shield his speeches from public scrutiny, The Nation magazine has obtained an audio recording of a recent, private speech delivered by Prince to a friendly audience. The speech, which Prince attempted to keep from public consumption, provides a stunning glimpse into his views and future plans and reveals  details of previously undisclosed activities of Blackwater. The people of the United States have a right to media coverage of events featuring the owner of a company that generates 90% of its revenue from the United States government.

In the speech, Prince proposed that the US government deploy armed private contractors to fight “terrorists” in Nigeria, Yemen, Somalia and Saudi Arabia, specifically to target Iranian influence. He expressed disdain for the Geneva Convention and described Blackwater’s secretive operations at four Forward Operating Bases he controls in Afghanistan. He called those fighting the US in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan “barbarians” who “crawled out of the sewer.” Prince also revealed details of a July 2009 operation he claims Blackwater forces coordinated in Afghanistan to take down a narcotrafficking facility, saying that Blackwater “call[ed] in multiple air strikes,” blowing up the facility. Prince boasted that his forces had carried out the “largest hashish bust in counter-narcotics history.” He characterized the work of some NATO countries’ forces in Afghanistan as ineffectual, suggesting that some coalition nations “should just pack it in and go home.” Prince spoke of Blackwater working in Pakistan, which appears to contradict the official, public Blackwater and US government line that Blackwater is not in Pakistan.

Prince also claimed that a Blackwater operative took down the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at President George W Bush in Baghdad and criticized the Secret Service for being “flat-footed.” He bragged that Blackwater forces “beat the Louisiana National Guard to the scene” during Katrina and claimed that lawsuits, “tens of millions of dollars in lawyer bills” and political attacks prevented him from deploying a humanitarian ship that could have responded to the earthquake in Haiti or the tsunami that hit Indonesia.

Several times during the speech, Prince appeared to demean Afghans his company is training in Afghanistan, saying Blackwater had to teach them “Intro to Toilet Use” and to do jumping jacks. At the same time, he bragged that US generals told him the Afghans Blackwater trains “are the most effective fighting force in Afghanistan.” Prince also revealed that he is writing a book, scheduled to be released this fall.

The speech was delivered January 14 at the University of Michigan in front of an audience of entrepreneurs, ROTC commanders and cadets, businesspeople and military veterans. The speech was titled “Overcoming Adversity: Leadership at the Tip of the Spear” and was sponsored by the Young Presidents’ Association (YPO), a business networking association primarily made up of corporate executives. “Ripped from the headlines and described by Vanity Fair magazine, as a Tycoon, Contractor, Soldier and Spy, Erik Prince brings all that and more to our exclusive YPO speaking engagement,” read the event’s program, also obtained by The Nation. It proclaimed that Prince’s speech was an “amazing don’t miss opportunity from a man who has ‘been there and done that’ with a group of Cadets and Midshipmen who are months away from serving on the ‘tip of the spear.’"...

Continue reading

Jeremy Scahill @'Rebel Reports'

Fox News, Rupert Murdoch… All Pirates

RapidShare Not Liable For Pirating Users, Court Rules

Like most file-hosting services, RapidShare carries a wide range of movies, music and software files that are distributed without the consent of the rightsholders. This situation has caused the company to be dragged to court several times already.
One of the cases in which RapidShare lost was that against the movie rental company Capelight Pictures. This case was appealed by RapidShare and the Dusseldorf Court of Appeals overturned the earlier verdict yesterday, stating that the file-hoster is not responsible for any copyright infringements committed by its users.
“We are very happy about the judgment. The court has confirmed that RapidShare is not responsible for the contents of files uploaded by its users,” Rapidshare founder Christian Schmid said commenting to the outcome of the appeal.
“The judgment shows that attempts to denounce our business model as illegal will not be successful in the long run. With its 1-click-filehosting model, RapidShare responds to legitimate interests of its users and will continue to do so in the future,” Schmid added.
The arguments by the Court of Appeals go directly against earlier decisions in Germany where RapidShare was ordered to filter content proactively. The Court argued that RapidShare’s business is acting within the law and discounted the preventive measures that were suggested by the copyright holder.
Filtering based on keywords is not effective since that would result in many false positives, the Court noted. Likewise, manually reviewing uploaded content is not deemed feasible because RapidShare does not have the manpower to do this.
Another suggestion, banning file formats such as RARs, was also tossed out since this file type says little about whether a file is copyrighted or not. RAR is simply a format used to compress data, regardless of the copyrighted status of the files, the court explained.
The verdict is undoubtedly a major victory for RapidShare, and it will also reflect positively on other file-hosters and even torrent sites. In fact, many of the arguments used by the Court hold also for the average torrent site, as long as they stay away from other means of facilitating copyright infringement.

Ernesto @'Torrent Freak'

BEWARE!

A decade on from the ILOVEYOU bug

(May the 4th be with you!)

Wobble's top ten dub tracks

HERE

What you should know about net neutrality

Obama FCC Expected to Abandon Net Neutrality, Universal Internet

On Sunday, the Washington Post reported that the Federal Communications Commission is expected to abandon its pledges to protect Net Neutrality and to ensure universal, affordable broadband. The story cites anonymous insiders confirming that FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is "leaning toward" siding with the most powerful phone and cable lobbyists on a crucial decision: whether the FCC will have any authority to protect an open Internet and make it available to all.

It is a testament to the phone and cable industry's overwhelming influence that they seem to have convinced the nation's communications agency to swear off authority to protect Americans' right to open communications. But it is stunning that Genachowski would even contemplate allowing it to stand, given President Obama's repeated pledge to ensure fast, affordable, universal Internet broadband for every American.
So what's going on here?
In early April, a a federal appeals court ruled that, based on decisions by the Bush-era FCC, the agency lacks the authority to regulate broadband providers. In so doing, the court effectively handed control of the Internet to companies like Comcast, AT&T and Verizon -- allowing them to slow down or block any website, any blog post, any tweet, any outreach by a congressional campaign. The FCC no longer has the power to stop them.

Fortunately, the FCC does have the power to easily fix the problem by "reclassifying" broadband under the law. All it would take is a vote by its five commissioners -- and Genachowski already has the votes. But so far, he has done nothing, while proponents of Net Neutrality (the principle that prevents providers from indiscriminately blocking or slowing Internet content) have been watching and waiting with bated breath.
If Genachowski gives up on restoring FCC authority, you can be sure he will claim that Internet deployment remains the signature issue of his FCC and that he can still accomplish the goals outlined in the FCC's recently released National Broadband Plan.

But unless the FCC puts broadband under what's called "Title II" of the Telecommunications Act, nearly every broadband-related decision the agency makes from here forward will be aggressively challenged in court, and the FCC will likely lose. The phone and cable companies know this, which is why they're going all out to keep the FCC from fixing the problem.

The goals of the much-feted National Broadband Plan are to ensure all Americans can get high-speed access to the open Internet -- not a closed version of the Internet that looks more like cable TV, where phone and cable companies decide what moves fast or not at all.

Chairman Genachowski could stand up for the American people, and against one of the biggest lobbying juggernauts in Washington, but it will take courage. If he fails to stand with the public, it could mean the end of the Internet as we know it.

Before it's too late, we need to make sure the FCC knows the American people are watching, and we will not sit quietly as the largest companies destroy the open, democratic Internet.

Josh Silver @'HuffPo'

Sasu Ripatti preps two full-lengths as Sistol

Multi-faceted Finnish producer Sasu Ripatti (AKA Vladislav Delay, Luomo, Uusitalo) will release two full-lengths this summer as Sistol, a guise that's lain dormant for over a decade.

Back in 1999, Ripatti released one self-titled techno record as Sistol, then gave up on the project indefinitely to focus on his other monikers. This July, Halo Cyon (a new sublabel of Phthalo) will release a remastered, two-disc version of Sistol, complete with remixes by Alva Noto, John Tejada, FaltyDL and [a]pendics.shuffle. This will be followed in August by a 12-inch and a new album, both entitled On the Bright Side, featuring all new tracks by Sistol.

"It's like getting back to an ex you were not in touch with for 10 years," Ripatti says of the new project (presumably in a good way). Chatting via email last week, he gave us the rest of the scoop on his resurrected pseudonym:

How would you characterize the sound of Sistol, as compared to Luomo, Uusitalo and Vladislav Delay?

Even though the sound is more bright and maybe somewhat less deep than what I have done I still think it's quite near to my sound, whatever that might be. Or at least an extension of it. It's more the process or the concept and definitely the inspirations behind Sistol that are different from other projects of mine. It's more straight-forward and less detailed, a little bit more rough or wild and also daring. More druggy than the other stuff, though some people might disagree with that.

Why didn't Sistol carry on like your other pseudonyms?

Early millennium I really got kind of fed up with the bass drum stuff and straight stuff. I went head first into experimental soundscapes and little later also to more pop-oriented dance floor stuff. Sistol just didn't have much room there for a long time. There has always been quite a lot of projects going on in parallel, so something had to give. Now I've stopped doing Luomo and Uusitalo at least for an indefinite amount of time and am also not doing anything under Vladislav Delay, instead concentrating on Sistol or completely new stuff.

What can expect from Sistol in terms of live performance?

I will try to really take a challenge to do live and improvised club sets which I haven't ever done before. Technically I haven't yet even decided what I'm going to use, that's one of the next things I need to concentrate on.

Tracklisting

Sistol

CD1: Remastered Reissue

01. Hajotus

02. Keno

03. Hac

04. Haaska

05. Kelmi

06. Luomo

07. Kotka

08. Kojo

CD2: Remakes/Remixes

01. Hac (Alva Noto Remodel)

02. Kotka (FaltyDL Refunk)

03. Kojo (John Tejada Remix)

04. Keno (Mike Huckaby S Y N T H Remix)

05. Haaska (Swelter Mix by [a]pendics.shuffle)

06. Kotka (Sutekh Parabolai Mix)

07. Hajotus (Duran Duran Duran DDD remix)

08. Keno (Somatic Responses SW Mix)

09. Nuomo (Ed Flis mix)

10. Nuomo (Ike Yard’s Metalli Tulitta)

On the Bright Side

01. (Permission to) Avalanche

02. Hospital Husband

03. On the Bright Side

04. A Better Shore

05. Fucked-Up Novelty

06. Contaminate Her

07. Glowing and so Spread

08. Funseeker

Halo Cyon will release Sistol (Remasters & Remakes) on July 27th, and On the Bright Side on August 24th, 2010.

@'RA'

Armando Iannucci: The Duffy affair turned the media into a pack of shrieking gibbons

Every election has its FFS moment. That's the point when normal politics is disrupted by an event so stupid it makes me swear at the telly a lot. The FFS moment is usually something that's got nothing to do with the issues and everything to do with the media being so bored that they suddenly get very very excited indeed over something like Labour's Party Political Broadcast about Jennifer's ear in 1992 (remember that?) or John Prescott thumping someone for having the audacity to wear a mullet in 2002. These moments when they happen are often described as the "defining" moment of the campaign, generate a lot of headlines and then go on to have no influence on the eventual outcome whatsoever.

I thought this election was going to be different. The seriousness of the financial meltdown that is its background noise, coupled with the dominant and obviously historic position of the live televised debates within it, seemed to be enough to feed the media beast. The closeness in the polls, and Clegg's sudden rise to the role of Kingmaker Apparent (remember that?) was all the excitement we needed.

 Then came Gordon Brown's Gillian Duffy moment, and suddenly all bets were off; history was being made, a gargantuan chapter in Britain's story was being written – and every journalist worth his or her salt was being rushed to Rochdale with a live satellite feed and enough throat lozenges to keep them shouting all through the night on live television.

As the gleeful camera pointed live at Mrs Duffy's door while the PM held his economic summit with her, I slumped down in despair at the biggest FFS moment of the past 20 years. Once again, all those questions we need answering but which have never been answered, culminating in the One Big Question – "What The Hell Are You All Going To Cut?" – were thrown away and ignored as the Fourth Estate hopped about like dyspeptic monkeys gleefully reporting the non-existent facts as they unfolded.

As someone who, in The Thick of It, has contrived several silly political moments like these, I appeared to be on a few insiders' contact lists, but there was something rather childish about the mobful of exultant voicemail messages left by hyper-ventilating journalists on my mobile, as BBC news programmes, daily newspapers, and Sky journos asked me to "do" a quick response to these events.

The journalist from Sky News was in some kind of hysterical state of tumescence as he cackled "Gordon Brown's done a gaffe and we wondered if you'd come on to respond. You've got to see it!" on my answering service, and I'm sorry I deleted it rather than release it in to the public domain. The BBC was no less sensationalist in its pokey recording of Brown sitting listening to his own surreptitiously recorded voice played back to him.

It's at these moments that you stand back and see, not a nation debating its future, but a pack of shrieking gibbons.

Thankfully, though, Bigotgate seems to have had no impact on the polls. This has restored my faith in this election as a sober, sincere and considered affair, though it's shed a light on what the media machine can do when it's taken too much Red Bull. But the electorate has come out of it beaming with integrity. I know at the end of each debate, politicians tend to say "The real winner tonight is the British public". Taken to its logical conclusion this means the British public won all three debates, which probably qualifies us for Europe where we take on the French public in the final. But, joking aside, I can't help feeling that's been true in the end, and that the public has played a blinder this election.

We asked big questions, we got annoyed they weren't being answered, we allowed another guy to have his say and thought he was decent enough to be given serious consideration, we said we didn't like negative campaigning and made sure it stopped, we roared with mockery when old-fashioned sleazy headlines were brought out on the nation's front pages, and we quite simply refused to be bought with easy promises, fancy slogans or cheap bribes. If the public were up for election this time round, I'd vote for them, and that's not necessarily something I would have felt like doing in the past.

After all that, it's probably ungainly and possibly a bit rude of me to say who I will actually be voting for but, along with this paper, I have absolutely no fear and a lot of hope that a hung parliament would actually knock some sense into a political system whose iniquities, brutalities and downright inefficiencies have provided the only negative noises of the past four weeks.

Personally, I think as big a Liberal Democrat vote as possible is the best way to get this, but I can understand that, if you live in a tight Lab/Con constituency, you might want to do something different. The websites progressiveparliament.org.uk and voteforachange.co.uk advise you on the best way of achieving a hung parliament from your constituency.

But, honestly, don't listen to me. I'm part of the media, so what do I know? You, the public, have set the agenda this time round, so listen to your heart and head. Above all, go and vote. And enjoy all the attention.

@'The Independent'

The Life and Crimes of Lenny Bruce

A jewel from the archives. My friend Steve Shepherd used to be a radio producer - producing Jez Nelson's Jazz on 3 for years. His first programme, though, made in 1996, was this documentary about Lenny Bruce, made for the Sunday Feature slot - also on Radio - 3 in 1996. It's narrated by rock critic legend Charles Shaar Murray and The Guardian, at the time, said

"You almost hear the smoke above the jazz and the jokes. Sad and very funny. And proof that it can be cool to listen to Radio 3?"

So here is Steve's show (MP3).

• The picture is a publicity still supplied to Steve by Lenny's record label when he started on the project.

Presenter: Charles Shaar Murray

Producer: Steve Shepherd

@'Speechification'
(Thanx Stan!)

Receiving radio on the Dirty Carter E.S.G.I.

HERE

Arrest Made in Times Square Bomb Plot

U.S. Seeks Man From Pakistan Tied to S.U.V. in Bomb Case

Federal authorities have identified the man who recently bought the 1993 Nissan Pathfinder that was rigged to explode in Times Square as a naturalized United States citizen from Pakistan who recently returned from a trip there, and were seeking to arrest him on Monday night, according to several people briefed on the investigation.

The man, a Connecticut resident who was not publicly identified, bought the sport utility vehicle in Bridgeport, within the last three weeks, paying cash in a deal that involved no formal paperwork.

The vehicle was discovered about 6:30 p.m. on Saturday on West 45th Street near Seventh Avenue, parked at an angle with its engine running and hazard lights on, as theatergoers tucked into preshow dinners. Sharp-eyed street vendors noticed smoke coming from the Pathfinder and flagged down a police officer. The police bomb squad found the makings of a car bomb: gasoline, propane, fireworks, fertilizer, wiring and alarm clocks.

Investigators who were tracking the man were also exploring whether he or others who might have been involved in the attempted bombing had been in contact with people or groups overseas, according to federal officials. The investigation was shifted on Monday to the control of the international terrorism branch of the Joint Terrorism Task Force, a multiagency group led by the Justice Department, according to two officials.

Officials cautioned that the investigation of possible international contacts did not mean there was a connection to a known terrorist group, but they said they were exploring all possibilities.

“It’s a prominent lead that they’re following, the international association,” said a senior official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a continuing investigation. “But there’s still a lot of information being gathered.”

On Monday, there was a sweeping response to the attempted attack in the tourist-packed city-within-a-city of Times Square — including an increased police presence, vehicle inspections and a touch of panic from veteran New Yorkers when a manhole fire flared five blocks from the scene of the failed bombing. Consolidated Edison blamed faulty wiring for the fire.

The recent sale of the Pathfinder began online. An advertisement that appears to be for the vehicle, which had 141,000 miles on the odometer and was listed for sale at $1,300 on at least two Web sites, emphasized that it was in good condition — “CLEAN inside and out!!” — with a recently repaired alternator and a new gas pump, distributor and front tires. “It does have some rust as you can see in the picture,” the seller allowed on NothingButCars.net, “but other than that, it runs great.” The other advertisement appeared on Craigslist.

In Bridgeport, the seller refused to answer questions. “You can’t interview her,” said an unidentified man at the woman’s two-story, white clapboard house. “She already talked to the F.B.I.”

The police continued sifting through footage from 82 city cameras mounted from 34th Street to 51st Street between Avenue of the Americas and Eighth Avenue, and from untold number of business and tourist cameras.

But investigators appeared to have begun to assign less significance to a man who appeared to be in his 40s who was seen on one video. That man was seen walking away from the area where the Pathfinder was parked and through Shubert Alley, which runs between 44th and 45th Streets. He looked over his shoulder at least twice and pulled off a shirt, revealing a red T-shirt underneath.

The New York police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, said investigators still wanted to speak to that man, but acknowledged that he might not be connected to the failed bombing. Paul J. Browne, the department’s top spokesman, said the police had stopped looking for additional video in the area that might have tracked the man’s movements.

“It may turn out that he was just somebody in the area, but not connected with the car bomb,” Mr. Browne said.

The police, though, said they might release footage of a man running north on Broadway at the time that a fire broke out in the Pathfinder, Mr. Kelly said.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. seemed optimistic in comments he made Monday morning. “I think that we have made really substantial progress,” he told reporters in Washington. “We have some good leads.”

The materials found in the Pathfinder were to be sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s laboratory in Quantico, Va., for analysis, the police said. “They’ve got the top laboratory in the world to do these sorts of examinations, and we’ll keep some samples here,” Mr. Kelly said.

Janet Napolitano, the homeland security secretary, said on the “Today” show on NBC that it was premature to label any person or group as suspect. “Right now, every lead has to be pursued,” she said. “I caution against premature decisions one way or the other.” But the White House made clear that it considered the effort an act of terrorism, whoever its authors were. “I think anybody that has the type of material that they had in a car in Times Square, I would say that that was intended to terrorize, absolutely,” said the White House spokesman, Robert Gibbs. 

@'NY Times'

U.S. Lawmakers Prepare Online Privacy Rules

.

United States lawmakers have spent a year preparing draft legislation for a law that would define and limit privacy for advertisers and Internet companies. The legislation will
govern methods of taking information from users online and using that information to target advertisements to them. On Tuesday, they will present the draft legislation.
The timing is good for such an announcement given the worry over, among other things, Facebook's recent changes that have caused fresh worry over privacy.
According to the Wall Street Journal, two of the representatives working on the bill, Rick Boucher (D-VA) and Cliff Stearns (R-FL) are posting the bill on their websites Tuesday. The plan is to accept feedback from readers for two months, then revise and submit it.

 Elements of the draft include the following:

• Disclosure of what information is collected and how, how it is used and who it is shared with
• Opt-outs for consumers.
• Restrictions on collecting financial, medical, government ID information and that of children

Internet and advertising companies, meanwhile, argue that any such bill risks damaging the $23 billion online advertising market.

Curt Hopkins @'ReadWriteWeb'