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Saturday 20 March 2010
The Pentagon Loses a Skirmish with WikiLeaks
What does the Pentagon have in common with North Korea, China, Zimbabwe, and a number of private Swiss banks? They all feel threatened by WikiLeaks, the Internet service that offers whistleblowers an opportunity to publish documents that expose corruption and wrongdoing by state and private actors. This week, WikiLeaks published a 32-page secret Defense Department counterintelligence study of WikiLeaks, which suggests that the American military was preparing to (or perhaps even did) attempt to hack into and shut down the site:
(S//NF) The obscurification technology[9] used by Wikileaks.org has exploitable vulnerabilities. Organizations with properly trained cyber technicians, the proper equipment, and the proper technical software could most likely conduct computer network exploitation (CNE) operations or use cyber tradecraft to obtain access to Wikileaks.org’s Web site, information systems, or networks that may assist in identifying those persons supplying the data and the means by which they transmitted the data to Wikileaks.org.
The report expressly cites China, Israel, North Korea, Russia, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe as nations that have taken steps against WikiLeaks, and it suggests other actions that could be taken by the United States. Noting that WikiLeaks relies upon “trust as a center of gravity by protecting the anonymity and identity of the insiders, leakers or whisteblowers,” it proposes that
The identification, exposure, termination of employment, criminal prosecution, legal action against current or former insiders, leakers, or whistleblowers could potentially damage or destroy this center of gravity and deter others considering similar actions from using the Wikileaks.org Web site.
What has the Pentagon so riled up? WikiLeaks published documents about U.S. equipment deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, materials on the use of certain gas agents in Iraq, and the Standard Operating Procedures for Guantánamo (SOP), which established in the minds of many critics (and legal authorities around the world) that the Bush Administration had in fact embraced practices designed to abuse or mistreat prisoners there and conceal the details of their treatment from the public and from the Red Cross. Cross-referencing the SOP against conduct reported in the NCIS investigation into the three alleged “suicides” of June 9, 2006, was, for instance, a principal tool used by researchers at Seton Hall Law School to discredit the NCIS conclusions. If those conclusions were accurate, then prison guards were engaged in systematic violation of fundamental provisions of the SOP with no disciplinary consequences.
Each of these disclosures was intensely embarrassing to the United States, leading to press coverage that tended to show that the United States was acting in conscious disregard of its legal obligations. But the Pentagon study turns this around:
Wikileaks.org is knowingly encouraging criminal activities such as the theft of data, documents, proprietary information, and intellectual property, possible violation of national security laws regarding sedition and espionage, and possible violation of civil laws. Within the United States and foreign countries the alleged ―whistleblowers‖ are, in effect, wittingly violating laws and conditions of employment and thus may not qualify as ―whistleblowers protected from disciplinary action or retaliation for reporting wrongdoing in countries that have such laws. Also, the encouragement and receipt of stolen information or data is not considered to be an ethical journalistic practice.
By this reasoning, every time a newspaper encourages a whistleblower to recount his experiences or to share a document that confirms them, the journalists are engaging in a criminal act. This suggests that the Pentagon’s copy of the U.S. Constitution is missing the First Amendment, or perhaps that the Defense Department has secured another one of those dodgy OLC memos stating that the First Amendment no longer applies to it.
The Pentagon study, which is classified “secret/noforn” is also revealing of the current Pentagon practice of classifying documents as “secret” because they would be embarrassing if published. The report draws entirely on public documents and public source materials, so nothing contained in it is in fact “secret.” In an ironic twist, the memo itself helps provide a justification for the existence of websites like WikiLeaks.
In 1960, a congressional committee, recognizing the need to rein in the extravagant claims of secrecy that were thriving in the Department of Defense and intelligence community, observed that
Secrecy—the first refuge of incompetents—must be at a bare minimum in a democratic society, for a fully informed public is the basis of self-government. Those elected or appointed to positions of executive authority must recognize that government, in a democracy, cannot be wiser than the people.
A young congressman from Illinois who supported the legislation put it just as sharply, saying that the forced disclosure of government information
will make it considerably more difficult for secrecy-minded bureaucrats to decide arbitrarily that people should be denied access to information on the conduct of government or to how a …. government official is handling his job. Public records, which are the evidence of official government action, are public property, and there should be a positive obligation to disclose this information upon request.
His name was Donald Rumsfeld.
Scott Horton @'Harpers'
Paul Bowles' 100th Birthday Party Mixtape
1. Paul Bowles - Points in Time XI
(nighttime recording of Tangiers streets)
2. Paul Bowles - Night Waltz
3. Hafiz Kani Karaca - Holy Qur'an, Baqara Surah II, 1-5
4. Cheikh Ayyad ou Haddou - Oukha Dial Kheir
5. Claude Debussy - Pour L'Egyptienne
6. Charles Trenet - Je Chante
7. Perihan Altındag-Sözeri - Haydar Haydar
8. Youbati
9. Youssou N'Dour - Tijaniyya
10. Lucienne Boyer - Parlez-moi D'Amour
11. Ryuchi Sakamoto - The Sheltering Sky (piano version)
12. Paul Bowles - Points in Time IV
(Click on Divshare logo to d/load)
Man guitarist Micky Jones RIP
Micky Jones played with Man from its formation in 1968 until ill health in 2002
Guitarist and singer Micky Jones, one of the founders of Welsh prog rock band, Man, has died aged 63.
With Merthyr Tydfil-born Jones, the band had four Top 40 UK albums from the late 1960s and toured across Europe and America, where admirers included Frank Zappa. Friend and former colleague Phil Little said Jones had a "command of melody" and was "the most humble guy".
Jones, who had been fighting a brain tumour, died at a care home in Swansea.
Mr Little, who played with Jones in the 1980s with the London-based The Flying Pigs, said Frank Zappa once described Jones as "one of the 10 best guitarists in the world".
He said: "I did hundreds of gigs with him and I never saw him have a cross word with anybody. He had maximum respect from all the musicians.
 With Micky Jones on guitar, Man had four albums in the UK UK Top 40 |
Jones' first band The Bystanders, was a Merthyr-based close harmony five-piece formed in the early 1960s, with BBC Wales radio presenter Owen Money, who was calling himself Gerry Braden, on vocals.
Money said he was "devastated" at the loss of someone who was a family friend as well as an artistic collaborator.
He said: "We came up together, we shared our life together. I know it was an inevitability but words can't express what I'm feeling at the moment.
"He taught me to play the guitar. His first job was as a hairdresser. He cut my hair.
"He was a fantastic musician. He had a "Frankie Valli" voice. We were set apart from any band in Wales at the time - we could do songs others could not do - because of his high falsetto voice.
 Micky Jones (second right) was ever-present in the band's line-up |
In 1968, after Money had moved on, the Bystanders added Deke Leonard, Jones' guitar partner for some three decades, embraced the counterculture and became Man.
They had four albums in the UK Top 40 between 1973 and 1976 and toured on continental Europe and America.
Music journalist Michael Heatley, who ran a Man fans newsletter for 20 years, said the band reached "the upper second division of British rock" but had been overlooked in the history of rock.
He said: "Man were a live band. People would go and see them because they knew that the live performance was going to be much better than the record.
Touring
"Micky was a fantastic improvisational guitarist. Deke would create the outline and Micky would "fill in the bits". The thing that kept people coming back was the he could make the guitar talk."
Man's ever-changing line-up had some 20 musicians over the years.
Jones was an ever-present member of Man, who split in 1976 and re-formed in 1983, until a brain tumour caused his departure in 2002.
He returned briefly two years later but retired from touring and spent his last years in residential care.
His son George was his immediate replacement, but he is now pursuing his own musical ideas away from Man.
He said: "I was so proud of him as a father and as a performer. To share a stage with him and be part of that legacy is one of the proudest moments."
He was buried yesterday.
Hmmm!
Cryptome.org is a venerable New York based anti-secrecy site that has been publishing since 1999. On Feb 24, 2010, the site was forcably taken down following its publication of Microsoft's "Global Criminal Compliance Handbook", a confidential 22 page booklet designed for police and intelligence services. The guide provides a "menu" of information Microsoft collects on the users of its online services. Microsoft lawyers threatened Cryptome and its "printer", internet hosting provider giant Network Solutions under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The DMCA was designed to protect the legitimate rights of publishers, not to conceal scandalous internal documents that were never intended for sale. Although the action is a clear abuse of the DMCA, Network Solutions, a company with extensive connections to U.S. intelligence contractors, gagged the site in its entirety. Such actions are a serious problem in the United States, where although in theory the First Amendment protects the freedom of the press, in practice, censorship has been privatized via abuse of the judicial system and corporate patronage networks.
PDF
AKA: 'theywhoshallnotbenamedhereinaustralia'
Friday 19 March 2010
Aqualung - Strange & Beautiful (Live)
(All this listening to Big Star has made me want to listen to some perfect pop songs.
This is one.)
Actually here is another...
Actually here is another...
CIA reportedly ordered Blackwater to murder 9/11 suspect
In 2004, the CIA sent a team from the private security firm Blackwater, now Xe, to Hamburg to kill an alleged al Qaeda financier who was investigated for years by German authorities on suspicion of links to al Qaeda, according to a little-highlighted element in a Vanity Fair article to be published this month.The report cited a source familiar with the program as saying the mission had been kept secret from the German government.
"Among the team's targets, according to a source familiar with the program, was Mamoun Darkazanli, an al Qaeda financier living in Hamburg who had been on the agency's radar for years because of his ties to three of the 9/11 hijackers and to operatives convicted of the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa," writes Vanity Fair's Adam Ciralsky.
"The CIA team supposedly went in 'dark,'' meaning they did not notify their own station -- much less the German government -- of their presence; they then followed Darkazanli for weeks and worked through the logistics of how and where they would take him down," reports the magazine.
Washington authorities, however, "chose not to pull the trigger," it said.
Vanity Fair has reemerged as a powerful journalistic force in recent years, outing the long-secret "Deep Throat" source of The Washington Post's Watergate reporting.
Earlier reports revealed that the Bush Administration was considering a "targeted assassination" program -- in apparent breach of international treaties -- which would have put lethal targets on the backs of terror suspects beyond the reach of US law. The article adds that the CIA also considering taking out Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan (at left), believed to be the mastermind behind Pakistan's development of a nuclear bomb.
"Khan’s inclusion on the target list, however, would suggest that the assassination effort was broader than has previously been acknowledged," Ciralsky writes.
A source purportedly said: “They say the program didn’t move forward because [they] didn’t have the right skill set or because of inadequate cover. That’s untrue. [The operation continued] for a very long time in some places without ever being discovered. This program died because of a lack of political will.”
Berlin today denies any knowledge of the CIA operation, according to a German media outlet.
Green party parliamentarian Hans-Christian Stroebele told a local paper that it was the government's job to monitor foreign intelligence agencies operating in Germany.
"It can't be true that they knew nothing," Stroebele told the daily Hamburger Abendblatt.
Deutsche Welle, the German news source, further reports today that Federal prosecutors in Hamburg are conducting an investigation into the magazine's CIA assassination plot claims.
German authorities have previously investigated Darkazanli but never charged him; he was arrested in 2004 on a Spanish extradition request but released nine months later.
"Among the team's targets, according to a source familiar with the program, was Mamoun Darkazanli, an al Qaeda financier living in Hamburg who had been on the agency's radar for years because of his ties to three of the 9/11 hijackers and to operatives convicted of the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa," writes Vanity Fair's Adam Ciralsky.
"The CIA team supposedly went in 'dark,'' meaning they did not notify their own station -- much less the German government -- of their presence; they then followed Darkazanli for weeks and worked through the logistics of how and where they would take him down," reports the magazine.
Washington authorities, however, "chose not to pull the trigger," it said.
Vanity Fair has reemerged as a powerful journalistic force in recent years, outing the long-secret "Deep Throat" source of The Washington Post's Watergate reporting.
Earlier reports revealed that the Bush Administration was considering a "targeted assassination" program -- in apparent breach of international treaties -- which would have put lethal targets on the backs of terror suspects beyond the reach of US law. The article adds that the CIA also considering taking out Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan (at left), believed to be the mastermind behind Pakistan's development of a nuclear bomb."Khan’s inclusion on the target list, however, would suggest that the assassination effort was broader than has previously been acknowledged," Ciralsky writes.
A source purportedly said: “They say the program didn’t move forward because [they] didn’t have the right skill set or because of inadequate cover. That’s untrue. [The operation continued] for a very long time in some places without ever being discovered. This program died because of a lack of political will.”
Berlin today denies any knowledge of the CIA operation, according to a German media outlet.
Green party parliamentarian Hans-Christian Stroebele told a local paper that it was the government's job to monitor foreign intelligence agencies operating in Germany.
"It can't be true that they knew nothing," Stroebele told the daily Hamburger Abendblatt.
Deutsche Welle, the German news source, further reports today that Federal prosecutors in Hamburg are conducting an investigation into the magazine's CIA assassination plot claims.
German authorities have previously investigated Darkazanli but never charged him; he was arrested in 2004 on a Spanish extradition request but released nine months later.
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