Sunday 6 March 2011

In early February, I blogged on the somewhat surprising news that Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir was encouraging his supporters to join Facebook to counteract anti-government demonstrators who were using the site to organize. Sudanese officials also revealed that Bashir's ruling party had been closely monitoring Facebook to gather information on the opposition.
Now, Shehnilla Mohamed of the Committee to Protect Journalists writes that Facebook organizing has become too dangerous for activists in Zimbabwe as well:

Despite the restrictions, Zimbabweans are reverting to satellite television and social media for information amid fears that the secret police has been infiltrating social media networks. Today, for instance, foreign-based Zimbabwean news websites are reporting the country's first "Facebook arrest," although officially unconfirmed, according to international media, the reports describe the arrest of a resident of Bulawayo-based Facebook user named Vikas Mavhudzi for allegedly posting a comment on the page of Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai about Egypt. Earlier this week, some alleged Zimbabwean activists apparently attempted to use Facebook to organize what they referred to as the Zimbabwe Million Citizen March. However, the march did not take place as people were skeptical of the authenticity of the call.

This was probably inevitable, since the same things that make Facebook an effective organizing tool -- its simplicity, openness, and popularity -- make it extremely easy for regimes to monitor and disrupt. As autocratic governments adapt, the days of the Facebook revolutions may be numbered.
Joshua Keating @'FP'

MoD silent over report of SAS men captured in Libya

The Ministry of Defence says it will not comment on a claim in the Sunday Times that members of the SAS have been seized by rebel forces in Libya.

In a statement, the MoD said: "We do not comment on the special forces."
The paper claims the unit was involved in a secret mission to put British diplomats in touch with rebels trying to topple Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.
It says eight SAS men, in plain clothes but armed, were captured as they escorted the diplomat in eastern Libya.
The paper claims the SAS soldiers were taken to Benghazi, the rebel stronghold, where they are being interrogated.
Troops loyal to Col Gaddafi have clashed with rebel forces in the central town of Zawiya in the last few days amid growing fears of a civil war.
The full statement from the MoD read: "We neither confirm nor deny the story and we do not comment on the special forces."
Geneva-based Human Rights Solidarity group said it was aware that a team of special forces had been seized by Libyan rebels but it did not know which country they were from.
Separately, a group of Dutch special forces was apparently captured by Col Gaddafi's forces in western Libya while trying to assist Dutch nationals to evacuate from the country.
Earlier, the MoD had confirmed Scottish troops were on standby to assist with humanitarian and evacuation operations in Libya.
The Black Watch, 3rd Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Scotland, is on a routine deployment notice of 24 hours at an RAF base in Wiltshire.
But they have not been earmarked for a combat role.
@'BBC'

The $110 Billion Question

Assange: The Case Against Sweden

Charlie and the Apple Factory

Via

Is This Quantico or Abu Ghraib? - Rep. Dennis Kuchinich

After initial allegations of mistreatment, I requested a visit with Private First Class Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of leaking classified information to WikiLeaks, to see for myself the conditions of his treatment.

Despite the fact that Manning has not been found guilty of any crime, his lawyer reports that he is in isolation 23 out of 24 hours every day, conditions which may violate his 8th Amendment protection from 'cruel and unusual' punishment. This treatment is in stark contrast to a presumption of innocence and raises questions of whether Pfc. Manning can be fit for trial.

My request to visit with Pfc. Manning must not be delayed further. Today we have new reports that Manning was stripped naked and left in his cell for seven hours. While refusing to explain the justification for the treatment, a marine spokesman confirmed the actions but claimed they were "not punitive."

Is this Quantico or Abu Ghraib? Officials have confirmed the "non-punitive" stripping of an American soldier who has not been found guilty of any crime. This "non-punitive" action would be considered a violation of the Army Field Manual if used in an interrogation overseas. The justification for and purpose of this action certainly raises questions of "cruel and unusual punishment," and could constitute a potential violation of international law.

The Army Field Manual, 2-22.3 (FM 34-52): Human Intelligence Collector Operations, Page 5-21, section 5-75 clearly states that: "If used in conjunction with intelligence interrogations, prohibited actions include, but are not limited to -- Forcing the detainee to be naked, perform sexual acts or pose in a sexual manner."

@'rsn'

The Truth Behind Quantico Brig’s Decision to Strip PFC Manning

What Libya Learned From Egypt

The Passive Aggressive Political Philosophy of Domscheit-Berg

The Scream For Freedom

The Strange Story of Joe Meek

(Thanx SJX!)

Daniel Ellsberg and Julian Assange Talk WikiLeaks

Che Guevara's Motorcycle Diaries companion Granado dies

Alberto Granado, the motorcycle companion of Ernesto Che Guevara, has died in Cuba at the age of 88.

The pair's eight-month journey around Latin America was immortalised in the 2004 film The Motorcycle Diaries.
The journey, begun in 1951, exposed the two medical students to deep poverty and social injustice and awoke Guevara's revolutionary convictions.
After helping Fidel Castro overthrow Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959, Guevara invited Granado to Cuba.
Cuban state media said he died of natural causes in Havana.
After arriving in Cuba in 1961, Granado taught biochemistry at Havana University.
His body is to be cremated and according to his wishes, the ashes are to be spread in Cuba, Argentina and Venezuela, Cuban television said.
Granado was born in Cordoba, Argentina, on 8 August 1922 and met Guevara as a child.
The film of their travels around Latin America on the motorcycle they called La Poderosa - The Powerful - was based on diaries both men kept.
Che Guevara was killed in Bolivia in 1967 as he tried to lead a revolution there.
In the 2004 film, Granado was played by Argentine actor Rodrigo De la Serna. Gael Garcia Bernal played Che.
@'BBC'

REPost: The Muppets rock LCD SoundSystem

Unofficial DIY Pop Video
Directed & Produced by Javier Douglas
Filmed by Joel Roberts & Javier Douglas
Edited by Javier Douglas & Joel Roberts

The Cypherpunk Revolutionary - Robert Manne on Julian Assange

Sage Francis, Saul Williams, Will Oldham - Sea Lion (Extended)

Opium Wars and the perfidy of Google

R.I.P. Jah Woosh (1952-2011)

Jah Woosh has passed away.

Only a few months after reggae fans mourned Gregory Isaacs' death, another reggae artist, the 58-year old DJ Jah Woosh, has passed away on Monday 21st February 2011. Despite having scored five #1 DJ albums in UK's Black Music Magazine, he never reached huge popularity and wide acknowledgement throughout a long period in his musical career. Jah Woosh was no U Roy, Big Youth, Dennis Alcapone or I Roy, but he was fresh and the fact that he had come through with an album, and not a long series of hit singles, was appreciated in those days. The cause of his death is currently unknown.

Read more

via jahsmoke

♪♫ Richard Thompson - Woodstock

Bradley Manning Will Be Made to Sleep Naked Nightly From Now On

HA!

Judge Lets Sony Unmask Visitors to PS3-Jailbreaking Site

The Slave Song

BIG thanx bonsai-superstar!

New revelations about slaves and slave trade

Saturday 5 March 2011

ChrisRRegan Chris Regan

Mike Huckabee's son hanged a stray dog at a boy scout camp in 1998 & carried a loaded gun onto a plane. Your move, Natalie Portman's foetus!

Fallen Marine's father says anti-gay pickets will draw gunfire

A day after the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed Westboro Baptist Church's right to protest against homosexuality at military funerals, the fallen Marine's father, who unsuccessfully sued the controversial Kansas congregation, warned that the church's protests will eventually spark violence.
"Something is going to happen," Albert Snyder told CNN Thursday. "Somebody is going to get hurt."
"You have too many soldiers and Marines coming back with post-traumatic stress syndrome, and they (the Westboro protesters) are going to go to the wrong funeral and the guns are going to go off."
"And when it does," Snyder said. "I just hope it doesn't hit the mother that's burying her child or the little girl that's burying her father or mother. It's inevitable."
In an 8-1 decision, the high court ruled Wednesday that Westboro Baptist Church has a First Amendment right to picket military funerals, no matter how "hurtful" the message may be. The decision ended Snyder's five-year court fight on behalf of his late son, Matthew, a Marine lance corporal killed in Iraq, whose funeral was picketed by Westboro church members.
Albert Snyder again slammed the high court justices for not having "the common sense that God gave a goat."

"I just can't believe that there was no common sense used in this decision," Snyder said.

Because of the ruling, Snyder will have to pay $116,000 in court costs to the Rev. Fred Phelps, the pastor of Westboro.
"The worst part of this," Snyder said, "is I know they are going to use that money to do this to other soldiers."
Snyder recalled his son's funeral.
"When my son died, I knew two days ahead of time that they were coming," Snyder said. "I had other children that I had to worry about that didn't know what was going on."
"Because of (the protesters') presence, I had police coming out of the woodwork, I had sheriffs. I had a SWAT team. I had emergency vehicles. I had media coming in," Snyder said. "All I wanted to do was have a private dignified funeral for my son.
"They turned it into a three-ring circus," Snyder said.
When asked what his next step will be, Snyder replied. "The thing that just hits me the hardest is all the hatred in this country."

"And I think if I wanted to look to what I'm going to do in the future, I feel like that maybe there's where I need to be," Snyder said, "to try do something with all the hatred that's in this country."

@'CNN'

HA! 'Nescafe spiked with hallucinogenic drugs'

Libyan authorities accuse al Qaeda of sending in drugs

The Revolution Will Not Be Properly Licensed

DJDMK - Dubstep vol 2

Download
1. Mstrkrft ft. John Legend - Heartbreaker (12th Planet Remix)
2. FunkyStepz ft. Lily McKenzie - For U (Dodge & Fuski Remix)
3. Dreadzone - Gangster (Trolley Snatcha Remix)
4. Kano ft. Michelle Breeze - Upside (Bar 9 Remix)
5. Kelly Rowland - Commander (True Tiger Remix)
6. 12th Planet & Juakali - Reasons (Doctor P remix)
7. Gorillaz - Doncamatic (feat. Daley) Joker Remix
8. Flux Pavilion - I Can't Stop
9. Kromestar - Jabber Jawz
10. Subscape - Mr Kipling
11. Toddla T ft Wayne Marshal - Sky Surfing (Benga Remix)
12. Doctor P Vs P Money - Sweet Shop (Come Follow Me)
13. Bare - Rocks
14. Noah D - That Hardcore Track
15. Liquid Stranger - Nucleor Bomb
16. Caspa - Marmite (Doctor P Remix)
17. Mojo - Pocket full Of rocks
18. Trolley Snatcha - Pass Me By
19. Diplo & Lil Jon - U Don't Like Me (Datsik Remix)
20. Freestylers - Cracks (Flux Pavilion Remix)
21. Subscape - Screw UP
22. P Money Feat Sukh Knight - Slang Like This

Drunknmunky Volume

Have you seen this man?

@'boing boing'

♪♫ Alabama 3 - Sad Eyed Lady of the Low Life

(Thanx Joe!)

Wisconsin class war in perspective: Walker’s false choice

I was happy to see that the following guest column by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka that appears in today’s Wall Street Journal (of all places!) had been liberated elsewhere so no one had to pay Rupert Murdoch to read it… Love this, Trumka says some important things here. If the state workers in Wisconsin—teacher, for god’s sake—were not to blame for the economic debacle, then why should they be expected to fix it? Please forward this, FB share it and Twitter it. This needs to get out from behind the WSJ’s pay-wall:

Close to 200,000 working Wisconsinites have been given the following option by Gov. Scott Walker: If you want to keep your job, give up your rights. If you want to keep your rights, you’re going to be laid off.
This is downright un-American. The governor’s choice is a false one, manufactured for political reasons.
The real question, the one at the heart of our economic debate, is this: Do we continue down a path that delivers virtually all income growth to the richest 1% of Americans, or do we commit to rebuilding a thriving middle class?
We believe to address this question, it’s crucial that we sit down at the table together and find a way to grow without taking more away from the middle class.
The business climate couldn’t be stronger. Corporate profits reached an annualized level of $1.7 trillion in the third quarter of 2010, the highest figure since the government began keeping statistics 60 years ago.
But, as we’ve seen, high corporate profits aren’t enough to drive robust and equitable economic growth. Three years after the onset of this epic recession, unemployment is still near double digits, millions of Americans are facing home foreclosure, and wages have been stagnant. In our consumer-driven economy, that pulls down businesses as well as tax revenues. Our entire economy is weaker when we have the kind of income inequality that we have today.
The freedom of workers to come together to bargain for decent living standards, safe workplaces, and dignity on the job has been a cornerstone of building our middle class. It’s also recognized in Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This right ensures that there is sufficient spending power to drive the consumer demand, which makes up two-thirds of our GDP. And it benefits all Americans—not just those who are in unions.
It’s no secret that boosting corporate profits no longer translates into shared prosperity. Many private-sector companies have gone to extraordinary lengths in recent years to effectively eliminate the freedom of workers to come together to bargain to lift living standards. That’s one reason middle-class wages have stagnated since the 1970s, and why the U.S. is at risk of becoming an hourglass economy—one with all the income at the top and people at the bottom.
Sadly, a group of radical Republican governors is working overtime to export the most short-sighted private-sector labor practices into the public sector. Not only are they demanding steep cuts in wages and pensions for public workers, they also want to take away workplace rights, so that workers can no longer bargain for better compensation and benefits.
Their claim is that public workers have become parasites, busting state budgets with bloated wages and benefits at a terrible cost to taxpayers.
But average citizens have little interest in taking away workers’ rights. According to a CBS/New York Times survey, Americans support bargaining rights for public workers by a nearly two-to-one margin. Despite their best efforts, governors like Scott Walker haven’t convinced Americans that public workers are at fault for state budget woes.
Nor does economic research support their arguments. When adjusted for education, experience and training, the data show that public-sector workers are paid less than their private-sector counterparts. Right now, state and municipal budgets are in trouble primarily because of high unemployment, falling incomes, and losses in the stock market. Together, these lead to lower tax revenues and depleted pension funds.
It wasn’t teachers or firefighters or nurses who crashed the stock market and caused the recession that led to millions of layoffs and foreclosures. It was the so-called engine of our economy—Wall Street—which has suffered no consequence after nearly destroying the global financial system in 2008. Wall Street bonuses averaged over $128,000 per person in 2010, more than six times the average pension for a retired public-service worker in Wisconsin.
So here’s working America’s message to governors like Scott Walker and New Jersey’s Chris Christie: We believe in shared sacrifice. But we don’t believe in your version of shared sacrifice, where the wealthy and Wall Street reap all the benefits of economic growth, and working people do all the sacrificing.
We need to improve the climate for America’s middle class. We need tough rules to protect the health of workers and consumers, fair taxes on the super-rich to support decent public services, fair trade policies, and a 21st century approach to workplace rights, which recognizes that high-performance enterprises depend on making employees a part of the team.
That’s a recipe that can repair not only our budgets, but also our body politic.

AMEN TO THAT.
But I do have just one question for the esteemed Mr.Trumka: “Where’s your buddy Obama?”

Richard Metzger @'Dangerous Minds'

Here we go again: Christians give voice to outrage over 'Salo'

The never-ending battle against the 1975 film Salo has moved to fresh ground. The Festival of Light (now known as FamilyVoice Australia) has asked the Federal Court to ban Pier Paolo Pasolini's film again, claiming that its release last year on DVD was an improper exercise of power by the Classification Review Board.
Thanks to the work of a dedicated band of Christian activists led by the Liberal senator Julian McGauran, Salo has been banned in Australia for most of the last 36 years. A brief few years of release in the 1990s saw the reinvigoration of film censorship in Australia and the banning of Salo again for another dozen years.
Salo follows a group of young men and women abducted by fascists and subjected to rape, torture and death in an Italian palace. Described by the board as ''a serious study of corruption which accompanies the exercise of absolute power'', the film was released last year in a boxed set with ''additional documentary features'' that the board thought ''would mitigate the level of potential community offence''.
Nevertheless, Senator McGaur- an and FamilyVoice Australia moved against the film again, this time in the courts. The barrister Anthony Tudehope accused the board of a long list of failings when judging the film, in particular the failure to separately identify and assess elements of violence, cruelty and fetishes - even bestiality, though Salo contains no congress with animals.
But the controversy surrounding Salo has been the age of the victims and the actors playing them. Along with a minority of the Classification Review Board, Mr Tudehope argued they are children being subjected to child sexual abuse, which was ''simply not acceptable'', he told the court.
But that was not the view of a majority of the board, which found Pasolini's victims ''clearly sexually mature'' and that their fate at the hands of the fascists would not offend reasonable adults given the ''context, purpose and stylised, detached cinematic techniques'' of the film.
The solicitor Nick Gouliaditis denied any failures of process in Salo's release. He told the court that assessing the merits of a film required ''highly subjective'' judgments which ''the Classification Review Board has been entrusted to make''.
Justice Margaret Stone has reserved her decision.
David Marr @'SMH'