Wikileaks cables released to date: 1621 of 251,287 = 0.00645079133%
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5 hours ago
Friday, 17 December 2010
Lawmakers and Legal Experts Call For Restraint in Wikileaks Hearing
The House Judiciary Committee held a surprisingly subdued hearing this morning on the legal and constitutional issues surrounding Wikileaks' publication activities. Committee members repeatedly emphasized the importance of protecting First Amendment rights and cautioned against overreaction to Wikileaks. The seven legal experts called to testify agreed, almost all of them noting that:
To learn more, take a look at the full video of the hearing, the witnesses' written testimony, and EFF's tweets throughout the morning.
- Excessive government secrecy is a serious problem that needs to be fixed,
- It's critically important to protect freedom of expression and the press, and
- The government should be extremely cautious about pursuing any prosecutions under the Espionage Act or any legislation that would expand that law, which is already poorly written and could easily be applied in ways that would be unconstitutional.
To learn more, take a look at the full video of the hearing, the witnesses' written testimony, and EFF's tweets throughout the morning.
Supporters claim Bradley Manning's health is deteriorating in jail
As Julian Assange emerged from his nine-day imprisonment, there were renewed concerns about the physical and psychological health of Bradley Manning, the former US intelligence operative suspected of leaking the diplomatic cables at the centre of the storm.
Manning, who was arrested seven months ago, is being held at a military base in Virginia and faces a court martial and up to 52 years in prison for his alleged role in copying the cables.
His friends and supporters also claim they have been the target of extra-judicial harassment, intimidation and outright bribery by US government agents.
According to David House, a computer researcher from Boston who visits Manning twice a month, he is starting to deteriorate. "Over the last few weeks I have noticed a steady decline in his mental and physical wellbeing," he said. "His prolonged confinement in a solitary holding cell is unquestionably taking its toll on his intellect; his inability to exercise due to [prison] regulations has affected his physical appearance in a manner that suggests physical weakness."
Manning, House added, was no longer the characteristically brilliant man he had been, despite efforts to keep him intellectually engaged. He also disputed the authorities' claims that Manning was being kept in solitary for his own good.
"I initially believed that his time in solitary confinement was a decision made in the interests of his safety," he said. "As time passed and his suicide watch was lifted, to no effect, it became clear that his time in solitary – and his lack of a pillow, sheets, the freedom to exercise, or the ability to view televised current events – were enacted as a means of punishment rather than a means of safety."
House said many people were reluctant to talk about Manning's condition because of government harassment, including surveillance, warrantless computer seizures, and even bribes. "This has had such an intimidating effect that many are afraid to speak out on his behalf," House said.
Some friends report being followed extensively. Another computer expert said the army offered him cash to – in his words – "infiltrate" the WikiLeaks website. He said: "I turned them down. I don't want anything to do with this cloak and dagger stuff."
When the Washington Post tried to investigate the claim, an army criminal investigation division spokesman refused to comment. "We've got an ongoing investigation," he said. "We don't discuss our techniques and tactics."...
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Heather Brooke @'The Guardian'
HA!
AndyECoulson If #Assange is not stopped it will leave a single Australian megalomaniac in control of the world media agenda. That job's already taken.
The Fall Live @ Billboard, Melbourne 10/12/10
1. Intro
2. Change
3. O.F.Y.C. Showcase
4. Theme From Sparta F.C.
5. Cowboy George
6. Bury
7. Chino
8. Strychnine
9. Greenway
10. I've Been Duped
11. Hot Cake
12. (break)
13. Muzorewi's Daughter
14. What About Us
15. (break)
16. Mr Pharmacist
17. Reformation
18. (break)
19. Psykick Dancehall
I will let you make up your own minds about this, but I thought they were fugn terrible (not the worst I have ever seen them mind you!) To think I went to this gig instead of the Gorillaz the next night!
Julian Assange released, vows Wikileaks to fight on
"It's great to smell the fresh air of London again.
First, some thankyous. To all the people around the world who have had faith in me, who have supported my team while I have been away.
To my lawyers, who have put up a brave and ultimately successful fight, to our sureties (bail guarantors) and people who have provided money in the face of great difficulty and aversion.
And to members of the press who are not all taken in, and considered to look deeper in their work.
And I guess finally, to the British justice system itself, where if justice is not always the outcome at least it is not dead yet.
During my time in solitary confinement in the bottom of a Victorian prison I had time to reflect on the conditions of those people around the world also in solitary confinement, also on remand, in conditions that are more difficult than those faced by me.
Those people also need your attention and support.
And with that I hope to continue my work and continue to protest my innocence in this matter and to reveal, as we get it, which we have not yet, the evidence from these allegations."
Thursday, 16 December 2010
U.S. Tries to Build Case for Conspiracy by WikiLeaks
Federal prosecutors, seeking to build a case against the WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange for his role in a huge dissemination of classified government documents, are looking for evidence of any collusion in his early contacts with an Army intelligence analyst suspected of leaking the information.
Justice Department officials are trying to find out whether Mr. Assange encouraged or even helped the analyst, Pfc. Bradley Manning, to extract classified military and State Department files from a government computer system. If he did so, they believe they could charge him as a conspirator in the leak, not just as a passive recipient of the documents who then published them.
Among materials prosecutors are studying is an online chat log in which Private Manning is said to claim that he had been directly communicating with Mr. Assange using an encrypted Internet conferencing service as the soldier was downloading government files. Private Manning is also said to have claimed that Mr. Assange gave him access to a dedicated server for uploading some of them to WikiLeaks.
Adrian Lamo, an ex-hacker in whom Private Manning confided and who eventually turned him in, said Private Manning detailed those interactions in instant-message conversations with him.
He said the special server’s purpose was to allow Private Manning’s submissions to “be bumped to the top of the queue for review.” By Mr. Lamo’s account, Private Manning bragged about this “as evidence of his status as the high-profile source for WikiLeaks.”
Wired magazine has published excerpts from logs of online chats between Mr. Lamo and Private Manning. But the sections in which the private is said to detail contacts with Mr. Assange are not among them. Mr. Lamo described them from memory in an interview with The New York Times. He said he could not provide the full transcript because the F.B.I. had taken his hard drive, on which it was saved...
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Charlie Savage @'NY Times'
Jon Savage on song: The Smiths' The Queen Is Dead is an anthem for our times
Eloquent rage ... The Smiths outside Salford Lads Club during the Queen Is Dead sessions. Photograph: Stephen Wright/Redferns
Eighteen seconds in, a high-pitched drone begins. For the next six or so minutes, it does not stop. Segueing between the sampled intro – a snatch of Cicely Courtneidge singing Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty – and the entry of the group themselves, this subtly modulating guitar feedback is both a formal device, to bridge the song's various changes, and a statement of intent: this is serious, this is getting to the heart of the matter – so listen up!
Like the Sex Pistols' God Save the Queen, the Smiths' The Queen Is Dead was designed as a state-of-the-nation address. The parallels are many: explicit criticism of the monarchy as a pillar of the existing class system; the toughest hard rock as the most effective method of making your point; lyrics that are a blast of eloquent rage from the standpoint of an outsider – in each case a young man of Irish extraction. Both reached No 2 in the charts.
The Queen Is Dead is the Smiths' mature masterpiece. The playing is faultless: the rhythm section is both supple and relentless, while Johnny Marr's wah-wah guitar is constantly in motion, in total sympathy with the song's mood changes: rhythmic and viciously propulsive one minute, ambient the next. Morrissey's lyrics are pointed, witty and tricksy, with their implied rhymes: "castration" instead of "strings" to take just one example.
Best of all, they give a thorough portrait of how it feels to be an outsider, rooted in a precise physical and psychological place – "hemmed in like a boar between arches". When you hear the line "but the rain that flattens my hair" you can think of no other place than Manchester, and in many ways The Queen Is Dead represents the highpoint of Morrissey's lyric writing – when he was still informed by his city and its past.
This sense of rootedness is important. You intuitively sense that the musicians have experienced, indeed have deeply felt, what they are communicating. They know of what they speak. This sense transmits itself to the listener, who in turn finds a reflection of their own experience, and so the bond is forged. And that sense of connection remains: two and a half decades after I first heard it, The Queen Is Dead still rings proud and strong.
When The Queen Is Dead was released in June 1986, Britain was nearing the end of a second term of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government. The miners were vanquished, the "new right" triumphant. Acid house was still underground, while the Live Aid effect had smeared middle-brow values all over rock music. There was surprisingly little dissidence expressed in popular culture, as the onset of CD software inaugurated a wave of retro marketing.
It was no accident that the Smiths engaged the period's other great outsider, Derek Jarman, to shoot a video to accompany the song. In many ways, this accompanying film – with its deserted docklands, androgynous figures, fast super 8 cutting and overlays – prefigures many of the themes and the techniques of his 1987 masterpiece, The Last of England – a howl of rage at third-term Thatcherism.
I've been thinking about The Queen Is Dead a lot after the student riots last Thursday (9 December). When something fundamental happens, it often falls to music to make some kind of emotional sense of an event that has strongly affected you. (When the HMS Sheffield was sunk in May 1982, I played the Sex Pistols' Holidays in the Sun over and over and over again, until my anger dissolved into tears).
The day's events are rich in resonance, quite apart from the actual power and the strength of feeling of the protest itself (and the police over-reaction). The increase in fees will mean that thousands of adolescents will now not go to university, which means that they will have to go to work: well, what work? The most recent unemployment figures show that the 18-24 age group is proportionately the worst hit by the recession.
It seems as though the coalition government has thrown the nation's youth into the dustbin (contrast with the National Assembly for Wales, which has capped fees at £3,290). In fact, youth has a huge symbolic and actual value: not only does it embody the future, it also symbolises the wish of a society to look forward, to prosper and grow.
You look at the picture of the young protestor, rising above the serried ranks of the police, resplendent in her This Is England haircut and Hatful of Hollow T-shirt. Then you read how Marr and Morrissey are undignified and "pompous" because they have tweeted their displeasure at David Cameron saying he likes the Smiths. They wrote the songs, they have every right. Such criticism merely reveals the conservatism of those who make it.
Then there's the picture of Charles and Camilla reeling in fright as a few citizens give them a bit of stick. ("The Queen is dead, boys, and it's so lonely on a limb"). This occurs in Regent Street, the London thoroughfare laid out by John Nash in the early 19th century, partly to prevent a repeat of the 1780 Gordon Riots – that major outbreak of urban disorder referenced by Malcolm McLaren in the Sex Pistols' film, The Great Rock'n Roll Swindle.
So you begin to get some hint of how this all binds together. Contrary to the babblings of the commentariat, pop music can have enormous emotional and social power. It can reflect and engage deep psychic and national archetypes. To deny that is to wilfully ignore a wealth of possibility and, indeed, a form of communication shared by thousands, if not millions – a form of communication that enables the voice of youth to be heard. Listen up!
Jon Savage @'The Guardian'
Wednesday, 15 December 2010
Redaction
█████ ██ █ ████ everything ███ █████ is ████ ██ ████ fine ████ ███ █ █████ love. █████ █████ ███ your ████ ████ government
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