Various Artists - C89
28 minutes ago
Wednesday, 11 May 2011
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange says whistleblowers cannot trust any website other than his own
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has warned whistleblowers to steer clear of rival whistleblowing sites set up by mainstream media outlets, saying that almost no website other than his own could be trusted.
The Australian freedom of information activist said people considering leaking sensitive information could not trust confidential sites such as a new one created by the Wall Street Journal, saying that Wikileaks was one of just a few that could be guaranteed to protect their sources.
Before taking the risk of giving a media outlet confidential information whistleblowers should check whether the organisation had secure technology and a track record of standing up to authority, he said, insisting that the Wall Street Journal "doesn't measure up on any criteria."
The Wall Street Journal is owned by News Corporation, which also publishes The Australian, but Mr Assange did offer some support to the Rupert Murdoch-led media group by defending its British Sunday newspaper, the News of the World over its phone hacking scandal.
Mr Assange launched a withering attack on the Guardian newspaper for its exhaustive coverage of the News of the World scandal, which has seen one reporter jailed and others questioned by police for tapping into the mobile phone voice messages of celebrities.
Newspapers which highlighted the phone-hacking scandal were threatening the free flow of information by making it difficult for media outlets to publish the contents of intercepted telephone calls, said Mr Assange, who claimed that the Guardian and the New York Times had partly been motivated by their corporate rivalry with News Corporation.
Siding with the tabloid newspaper famed for its scoops about the private lives of celebrities, Mr Assange said "a middle-class moral majority that embodies itself in the Guardian" had derided such stories.
In a surprisingly strong defence of populist journalism the internet activist said the media's test of what was in the "public interest" should be shaped by what the public or "the proletariat" was interested in.
Mr Assange has had bitter fallings out with the Guardian and the New York Times, which worked closely with him last year before eventually criticising some of his methods and reporting extensively on allegations that he had committed sex crimes in Sweden.
Mr Assange's defence of the tabloid newspaper came at a ceremony in London to award him a gold medal from the Sydney Peace Institute for his whistleblowing work.
"When organisations like the Guardian write over 100 articles on the News of the World being involved in putting in default passwords into voice mailboxes - because that is what we are actually talking about here - they are taking space from other things and they also have other agendas at work," he said.
"The other agendas at work are attacking newspaper rivals in the same market, it is their biggest rival in the same market, it should be obvious to everyone."
"The New York Times became involved because similarly it wants to attack the Wall Street Journal in its market."
Mr Assange said that Wikileaks had aired some major political issues in Peru by publishing leaked intercepts of telephone conversations between politicians and business leaders.
For the Guardian and New York Times "to engender a climate where that is hard to do is extremely dangerous."
"The British press should be very careful what they are doing in relation to spending time on that as opposed to all the other injustices they could be spending their time on."
Mr Assange said the media "misuses its power in approximate proportion to the size of the particular industrial grouping and News Corporation is a very large industrial grouping and it uses it power accordingly" but that did not justify the attacks on the News of the World.
To criticise stories about the private lives of celebrities "is to say that the interests of the proletariat which are the readers of the News of the World are insignificant and are not important and that the middle-class moral majority that embodies itself in the Guardian is to be the arbiter of what is important and what is not important."
"And if the reality is that the readers of the News of the World, and there are very many, find a particular thing to be of significance, a particular character or personality to be influential to their lives, the information about how that person truly behaves is also influential to their lives."
"It also seems to me it is a way to get into the Guardian news about celebrities and about the tabloid salacious rumours, you can just report on what the News of the World has done."
"So generally I say that the public interest is to be determined by what the public is interested in because otherwise...who is going to determine the public interest if it is not the public, is it going to be a self appointed committee of people?
"Well who appoints those people, who appoints that committee... how do we know that process won't become corrupted?"
Mr Assange said he applauded the idea of media organisations such as the WSJ and the broadcaster Al-Jazeera setting up their own sites to confidentially receive whistle-blowing information but the reality was that whistleblowers should be careful about who they trusted.
"So for the WSJ and for similar organisations that whistle blowers are thinking about dealing with it is not just the technology it is a combination of the technology and the people. The technology is opaque and very complex and sophisticated if done right so how are you to assess whether technology has been done right?"
"How are you to assess whether these people will sell you out, as the WSJ permits in its terms and conditions to sell you out any time they like?
"You have to look at the people who are running the organisation, what is their history and their experience. Have they stood up to pressure before and have they managed themselves well before so there is actually very, very few organisations. "There are almost no organisations other than us that have that track record.
"On individual journalists there is just a few with a track record of not buckling when they receive pressure and so I would advise everyone who is thinking a bout disclosing confidential information to look very closely at the track record of the people that they may be dealing with - but don't google their name from your home."
Peter Wilson @'The Australian'
Gaza Strip (2002)
In early 2001 I spent three months in Gaza filming material for this documentary, GAZA STRIP, working with local fixer and translator, Mohammed Mohanna. The second Palestinian uprising against Israeli military occupation had begun in September, 2000, and there had already been large numbers of deaths in Gaza when I started this project.
Though the period this documentary covers includes the election of Ariel Sharon as Israeli Prime Minister and large incursions by the Israeli Defense Forces into Gaza, in retrospect the time depicted here is one of relative quiet. More recent Israeli attacks against Gaza have been far more destructive and deadly than what falls into the scope of this film.
The time since the release of this film in 2002 has seen many changes, including the evacuation of illegal Israeli settlements inside the Gaza Strip and the election of Hamas. However, the occupation and attacks against Gaza continue, and the blockade of Gaza has intensified. It is my hope that this film will provide a partial introduction to Gaza for those who have come to the subject recently, and also serve as a document of its time.
I am making this film available completely free, however those who wish to contribute to my future filmmaking efforts may do so via PayPal or mail on my website:
daylightfactory.com/gaza_strip.html
Thanks!
James Longley
Director, Camera, Editor, Music, Producer
Japan: MSF Continues Psychological Services for Earthquake Survivors
Japan 2011 © Yozo Kawabe/MSF
MSF staff supervise construction of a temporary shelter by local evacuees at Baba-Nakayama.
Two months after a massive earthquake and tsunami hit northeast Japan, a team of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Japanese psychologists are continuing to work with survivors as government-led recovery efforts expand across the region.MSF has also designed, provided materials for, and managed the construction of a temporary housing shelter for 30 people in Baba-Nakayama in Miyagi prefecture. Completed May 4, the temporary shelter will alleviate overcrowded conditions at the town’s main center, thereby strengthening infection control and decreasing stress-related disorders among evacuees.
During the planning phase, many evacuees expressed a strong desire to be involved in the construction of the center. When building got underway, 25 local people took part—workers at the site were provided with safety gear and supervised by MSF staff—and the facility was completed well ahead of the original schedule.
“There was a very positive atmosphere at the building site, with a lot of laughter and smiles among the workers, many of whom have been living in tents, cars, or half-destroyed houses due to overcrowding at the evacuations centers,” said Yozo Kawabe, the MSF logistician in charge of the project.
“They were really happy to play a hands-on role in the construction activities and the whole process was very therapeutic psychologically because these survivors of the disaster could unite towards a common goal and regain a sense of self-reliance.”
Medical authorities have requested that MSF continue to provide the three doctors currently supporting local clinics in the area. However, as the local medical infrastructure stabilizes, MSF is shifting the focus of its intervention towards providing psychological assistance to particularly vulnerable survivors of the disaster, including elderly evacuees, single parents, and those with physical disabilities and chronic diseases.
The team of six national psychologists is also providing educational activities at an evacuation facility in Minami Sanriku to help survivors living in the center identify those in need of psychological support and individual treatment. An open booth provides information on mechanisms for coping with stress, recognizing mental health issues, and finding additional assistance. Specialized information tailored for parents and evacuees taking care of the elderly is also available.
MSF established a café at the Bayside Arena Clinic in Minami Sanriku to function as a space where evacuees can interact with MSF staff directly in a less formal, more social environment. This provides opportunities to meet the population directly, build trust, and identify vulnerable cases for further referral and therapeutic treatment.
“Most people lost everything in the disaster, including family, colleagues, and friends, and the future is difficult to imagine,” said Ha Young Lee, a Korean psychologist who has previously worked with MSF in Indonesia following the Asian tsunami in 2005 and with North Korean refugees in Seoul. “Many of the evacuees are depressed and feel helpless, and many are also going through a mourning process while coping with living in particularly challenging physical circumstances.”
As the initial shock of the disaster recedes, families must now address the process of moving forward and dealing with relocation and financial issues. “The need for psychological services is only going to increase in the months ahead as survivors begin to face the challenges of rebuilding their lives,” Ha Young added. “They are already vulnerable and deeply emotionally traumatized, and stressful issues related to compensation and relocation are likely to trigger more serious mental health problems that need to be addressed.”
MORE
@'Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières'
AC/DC Say Their Songs Will Never Be Available For Download; Rest Of Internet Laughs
Capitalist Lion Tamer points us to the news that the band members of AC/DC are standing firm in saying that they will never allow authorized versions of their music to be sold online for download. The logic here seems to be entirely lacking. The band claims that it's because they want people to listen to the whole albums, not just tracks, but if that's the case then they should just release the whole album as a single track. The fact is that anyone who has their albums can choose to listen however they want. And any time one of their songs is played on the radio, only one song is heard -- yet you don't hear them talk about boycotting radio. But, of course, the bigger issue is that it's silly to not offer an authorized way for people to pay you for your music, when the alternative that plenty of people will choose, instead, is to simply download unauthorized versions where the band has no say at all.
Mike Masnick @'techdirt'
Mike Masnick @'techdirt'
How Wasteful is Spending on Homeland Security?
From a new paper (pdf) by John Mueller and Mark Stewart. Their book on this subject is forthcoming.The cumulative increase in expenditures on US domestic homeland security over the decade since 9/11 exceeds one trillion dollars. It is clearly time to examine these massive expenditures applying risk assessment and cost-benefit approaches that have been standard for decades. Thus far, officials do not seem to have done so and have engaged in various forms of probability neglect by focusing on worst case scenarios; adding, rather than multiplying, the probabilities; assessing relative, rather than absolute, risk; and inflating terrorist capacities and the importance of potential terrorist targets. We find that enhanced expenditures have been excessive: to be deemed cost-effective in analyses that substantially bias the consideration toward the opposite conclusion, they would have to deter, prevent, foil, or protect against 1,667 otherwise successful Times-Square type attacks per year, or more than four per day. Although there are emotional and political pressures on the terrorism issue, this does not relieve politicians and bureaucrats of the fundamental responsibility of informing the public of the limited risk that terrorism presents and of seeking to expend funds wisely. Moreover, political concerns may be over-wrought: restrained reaction has often proved to be entirely acceptable politically.
Via
Jessica Taylor is the latest victim named
Identifying Another Victim, Officials Raise Possibility of a 2nd Long Island Killer
Saudi Arabia flogs orphan girls
The girls received 10 lashes each at a women's prison in Medina, Islam's second holiest city.
"The order against the six orphans is a legitimate court order," Mohammed al-Awadh, the public relations manager at the ministry of social affairs, told Reuters. "The ministry does not have the right to interfere in a court order."
He gave no details of the ruling but the Arabic-language newspaper Okaz said the girls had been convicted of "acts of mischief" and attacking the director of the orphanage.
The girls defended their actions, saying they were harassed by the director, Okaz reported.
International human rights groups have criticised the Saudi justice system for applying corporal punishment for petty crimes, as well as limb amputations for thieves and beheadings for murderers under its strict interpretation of Islamic law.
Saudi officials say the practice is widely approved by Saudi society and is a deterrent to crime.
In January 2010 a teenage girl was sentenced to 90 lashes and two months in prison for hitting her school principal on the head with a cup when she took away her mobile phone.
Awadh said the ministry would continue to care for the girls after the floggings were carried out.
"What it will do is rehabilitate and take care of the girls' social wellbeing, which is part of its duties and responsibilities."
@'The Guardian'
ubuweb Ubu Web
Grab all 15 1/2 hours of Fassbinder's "Berlin Alexanderplatz": http://is.gd/8NxlNJ (via @worldscinema)
Tuesday, 10 May 2011
Julian Assange being awarded Sydney Peace Prize Gold Medal
Free live streaming by Ustream
The Sydney Peace Foundation has awarded its Gold Medal for peace with justice to WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange. The citation reads, 'For exceptional courage and initiative in pursuit of human rights'.
The Director of the Sydney Peace Foundation, Professor Stuart Rees, has stated 'Assange's work is in the Tom Paine Rights of Man and Daniel Ellsberg Pentagon Papers tradition- challenging the old order of power in politics and in journalism. Assange has championed people's right to know and has challenged the centuries old tradition that governments are entitled to keep the public in a state of ignorance. In the Paine, Ellsberg and Assange cases, those in power moved quickly to silence their critics even by perverting the course of justice'.
The Director of the Sydney Peace Foundation, Professor Stuart Rees, has stated 'Assange's work is in the Tom Paine Rights of Man and Daniel Ellsberg Pentagon Papers tradition- challenging the old order of power in politics and in journalism. Assange has championed people's right to know and has challenged the centuries old tradition that governments are entitled to keep the public in a state of ignorance. In the Paine, Ellsberg and Assange cases, those in power moved quickly to silence their critics even by perverting the course of justice'.
RA.250 Heinrich Mueller (Dopplereffekt)
Tracklist
Voice of Relativity
Dopplereffekt - Mirror Symmetry
ArD2 - Sabotage
Beta Evers - Confusion
ArD2 - Utopia
Gedankenexperiment - Conclusion
Urban Tribe - Carbon 14
Paka - Solitude:
Dopplereffekt - Myon Neutrino
Dopplereffekt - Sterilization
Der Zyklus - Polar Coordinates
Dopplereffekt - Scientist
Zwischenwelt - Remote Viewer
Dopplereffekt - Plastiphilia
Zwischenwelt - Shadow Being
Der Zyklus - Formenverwandler
Zwischenwelt - Telemetric
Dopplereffekt - Speak and Spell
Dopplereffekt - Satellites
Der Zyklus - Biometric Systems
Urban Tribe - Amygdala
ArD2 - Drug of a Nation
Zwischenwelt - Premonition
Der Zyklus - Biometric ID
Zwischenwelt - Enigmata
Zwischenwelt - Multiplexsistence
Arpanet - Universe Oscillation
Beta Evers - Only for My Satisfaction
Dopplereffekt - Non Vanishing Harmonic Spinor
Zwischenwelt - Clairvoyant
Neuroleptica - Tardive Dyskinesia
Zwischenwelt - Shadow Being
Dopplereffekt - Anti Neutrino
Zerkalo - I Know More
Arpanet - Grossvater Paradoxen
Dopplereffekt - Z^0 Boson
Download
Via
guardian_world Guardian World
Libya audio dispatch: mounting speculation over Gaddafi's health after Tripoli bomb strike http://bit.ly/mOxqqi live updates.
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