Is the U.S. engaging in cyberwarfare against Wikileaks? [UPDATE]

[UPDATE]

according to raw story, the wikileaks website that was relocated to switzerland has since been taken down as well... the wikileaks url is now at the following link - http://213.251.145.96/...

when you get to the part about the massive 10GB/s denial of service stream, you have to ask yourself, who is capable of that kind of attack...?

Amid international pressure and a series of crushing denial of service attacks, the site WikiLeaks.org has finally slipped underneath the waves. It's DNS host, EveryDNS.com, killed the domain early late Thursday night, according to an update posted to WikiLeaks' Twitter account.

The host cited "mass attacks," the whistleblower organization said.

The take-down is another in a long line of setbacks for WikiLeaks, which has in past months completely upturned historical precedent in the successful release of more secret US government information than anyone else ever before it.

[...]

Word of the take-down came days after the site said it was feeling the effects of a series of massive denial of service attacks, which is what forced the switch-over to American servers. One sustained attack exceeded 10 Gigabits per second, according to WikiLeaks.

"According to a study by Internet security company Arbor Networks, the average denial of service attack over the past year was 349 megabits per second, 28 times slower than the stream Wikileaks reported," CBS New York noted.

[...]

Update: The site has relocated to Switzerland, and is now available at Wikileaks.ch. Read more about the move at the New York Times here.

wikileaks has always claimed to have massive back-up in place... i guess this will be the test...

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Dylan Ratigan - money for nothing

from realecontv...

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The complete disgrace of Amazon kicking Wikileaks off its servers

glenn once again talks about the appalling hypocrisy between what our fair country preaches and what it practices...

Talking Points Memo -- in an article headlined: "How Lieberman Got Amazon To Drop Wikileaks" -- detailed that Lieberman's "staffers . . . called Amazon to ask about it, and left questions with a press secretary including, 'Are there plans to take the site down?'" Shortly thereafter, "Amazon called them back . . . to say they had kicked Wikileaks off." Lieberman's spokeswoman said: "Sen. Lieberman hopes that the Amazon case will send the message to other companies that might host Wikileaks that it would be irresponsible to host the site."

That Joe Lieberman is abusing his position as Homeland Security Chairman to thuggishly dictate to private companies which websites they should and should not host -- and, more important, what you can and cannot read on the Internet -- is one of the most pernicious acts by a U.S. Senator in quite some time. Josh Marshall wrote yesterday: "When I'd heard that Amazon had agreed to host Wikileaks I was frankly surprised given all the fish a big corporation like Amazon has to fry with the federal government." That's true of all large corporations that own media outlets -- every one -- and that is one big reason why they're so servile to U.S. Government interests and easily manipulated by those in political power. That's precisely the dynamic Lieberman was exploiting with his menacing little phone call to Amazon (in essence: Hi, this is the Senate's Homeland Security Committee calling; you're going to be taking down that WikiLeaks site right away, right?). Amazon, of course, did what they were told.

and here we have jay rosen talking about why an organization like wikileaks even exists and why our completely degraded approach to journalism and transparency makes it necessary...

Jay Rosen on Wikileaks: "The watchdog press died; we have this instead." from Jay Rosen on Vimeo.

(thanks to glenn greenwald...)

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The U.S., under Obama, stifled Spanish torture prosecution of Bush officials

the money quote...

Spain has been in a furor for three days over the revelations.

The revelations have "created deep concern about the independence of judges in Spain and the manipulation of the entire criminal justice system by a foreign power."

read daniel tencer's article in raw story here...

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The Fed wants to act to make the foreclosure crisis and predatory lending WORSE...?

what the hell is wrong with these people...?

Fed wants to strip a key protection for homeowners

As Americans continue to lose their homes in record numbers, the Federal Reserve is considering making it much harder for homeowners to stop foreclosures and escape predatory home loans with onerous terms.

The Fed's proposal to amend a 42-year-old provision of the federal Truth in Lending Act has angered labor, civil rights and consumer advocacy groups along with a slew of foreclosure defense attorneys.

They're not only asking the Fed to withdraw the proposal, they also want any future changes to the law to be handled by the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which begins its work next year.

In a letter to the Fed's Board of Governors, dozens of groups that oppose the measure, including the National Consumer Law Center, the NAACP and the Service Employees International Union, say the proposal is bad medicine at the wrong time.

"At the depths of the worst foreclosure crisis since the Great Depression, we are surprised that the Fed has proposed rules that would eviscerate the primary protection homeowners currently have to escape abusive loans and avoid foreclosure: the extended right of rescission."

Because the public comment period on the Fed's proposal is still open until Dec. 23, a spokesman declined comment on the matter.

But in a September passage in the Federal Register, the Fed said the proposal was designed to "ensure a clearer and more equitable process for resolving rescission claims raised in court proceedings" and reflects what most courts already require.

Since 1968, the Truth in Lending Act has given homeowners the right to cancel, or rescind illegal loans for up to three years after the transaction was completed if the buyer wasn't provided with proper disclosures at the time of closing.

Attorneys at AARP have used the rescission clause for decades to protect older homeowners stuck in predatory loans with costly terms. The provision is also helping struggling homeowners to fight a wave of foreclosure cases in which faulty and sometimes-fraudulent disclosures were used.

The violations must be of a material nature to invalidate a loan under the extended-rescission clause. To do so, homeowners — usually those facing financial problems or foreclosure — hire an attorney to scour their mortgage documents for possible violations regarding the actual cost of the loan or payment terms.

If problems are found, a notice of rescission is sent to the creditor, which can either admit to the alleged violation or contest it in court.

Creditors that end up rescinding a loan are then required to cancel their "security interest," or lien, on the property.

Once that occurs, the homeowner must then pay the outstanding loan balance back to the lender — minus the finance charges, fees and payments already made.

Dropping the lien provides homeowners with a defense against foreclosure and allows them to refinance to pay the outstanding loan amount.

Critics say the proposed change by the Fed would render the rescission clause useless. The Fed proposal would require homeowners who seek a loan rescission through the courts, to pay off the entire loan balance before the lender cancels the lien.

so, you can't come up with the money to re-finance until you get out of the current loan and you can't get out of the current loan until the lien is released... now, THERE'S a catch-22...

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A dumbed-down, morally bankrupt society

black friday is an allegory for what the united states has become...

The Madness of a Lost Society



(thanks to information clearing house...)

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Richard Stengel at Time interviews Julian Assange

very interesting...

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Glenn on the critics of Wikileaks

there's lots more but this kind of sums it up...

[W]hat I'm finding truly stunning about the increasingly bloodthirsty two-minute hate session aimed at Julian Assange, also known as the new Osama bin Laden [is that the] ringleaders of this hate ritual are advocates of -- and in some cases directly responsible for -- the world's deadliest and most lawless actions of the last decade. And they're demanding [Julian] Assange's imprisonment, or his blood, in service of a Government that has perpetrated all of these abuses and, more so, to preserve a Wall of Secrecy which has enabled them. To accomplish that, they're actually advocating -- somehow with a straight face -- the theory that if a single innocent person is harmed by these disclosures, then it proves that Assange and WikiLeaks are evil monsters who deserve the worst fates one can conjure, all while they devote themselves to protecting and defending a secrecy regime that spawns at least as much human suffering and disaster as any single other force in the world. That is what the secrecy regime of the permanent National Security State has spawned.

those who make it their business to speak for our country have never let a little thing like utter hypocrisy stand between them and their propaganda...

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Soldiers keep on warrin'... Powers keep on lyin' while your people keep on dyin'

i had forgotten how much i like this song and how much i like stevie wonder...

People keep on learnin'
Soldiers keep on warrin'
World keep on turnin'
Cause it won't be too long

Powers keep on lyin'
While your people keep on dyin'
World keep on turnin'
Cause it won't be too long

I'm so darn glad he let me try it again
Cause my last time on earth I lived a whole world of sin
I'm so glad that I know more than I knew then
Gonna keep on tryin'
Till I reach the highest ground

Teachers keep on teachin'
Preachers keep on preachin'
World keep on turnin'
Cause it won't be too long
Oh no

Lovers keep on lovin'
Believers keep on believin'
Sleepers just stop sleepin'
Cause it won't be too long
Oh no

I'm so glad that he let me try it again
Cause my last time on earth I lived a whole world of sin
I'm so glad that I know more than I knew then
Gonna keep on tryin'
Till I reach my highest ground...Whew!
Till I reach my highest ground
No one's gonna bring me down
Oh no
Till I reach my highest ground
Don't you let nobody bring you down (they'll sho 'nuff try)
God is gonna show you higher ground
He's the only friend you have around

pretty topical stuff for 1973 - and today as well...

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They don't need it, they don't deserve it and they won't spend it

robert reich...

The President met with Republican leaders at the White House this morning to talk about whether the Bush tax cuts should be extended to top taxpayers, at Republicans want.

No decision has been reached, but this is the first test of the President's resolve with the new Congress - and he should be tough as nails. The economics and politics both dictate it.

Taxpayers in the top 1 percent don't need it (they are now getting almost a quarter of all national income, the highest percent since 1928).

They don't deserve it (they got the lion's share of the benefits of the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts, and have had no reason to expect a continuation of their windfall).

They won't spend it to stimulate the economy (top earners save a much higher proportion of their income than the middle class).

And giving it to them blows a giant hole in the budget (the Joint Tax Committee estimates the cost of extending the Bush tax cuts for the top 1 percent to be $61 billion in 2011 alone.)

In political terms, a strong stand enables the President to clearly demonstrate who's side he's on (the working and middle class that's still bearing the brunt of this lousy economy) and who's side the Republicans are on (the powerful and privileged who brought much of this on, and who are now doing just fine).

The only compromise he should be prepared to make is to extend the Bush tax cuts to the bottom 99 percent (rather than the bottom 98 percent), and for two years rather than ten.

"he should be tough as nails"... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...! trust me, i ain't holding my breath...

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Why we need Wikileaks and why that's a good thing

glenn greenwald...

The central goal of WikiLeaks is to prevent the world's most powerful factions -- including the sprawling, imperial U.S. Government -- from continuing to operate in the dark and without restraints. Most of the institutions which are supposed to perform that function -- beginning with the U.S. Congress and the American media -- not only fail to do so, but are active participants in maintaining the veil of secrecy. WikiLeaks, whatever its flaws, is one of the very few entities shining a vitally needed light on all of this. It's hardly surprising, then, that those factions -- and their hordes of spokespeople, followers and enablers -- see WikiLeaks as a force for evil. That's evidence of how much good they are doing.

what can i say but yep, yep and yep...

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The "terrorists" don't even CARE if their bombs explode

it could be an empty box with a cheap clock ticking inside... no matter... our national security state will use it as a pretext to further humiliate and degrade us all in the name of our "safety"...

tom engelhardt...

Here’s a singular fact to absorb: we now know that a bunch of Yemeni al-Qaeda adherents have a far better hit on just who we are, psychologically speaking, and what makes us tick than we do. Imagine that. They have a more accurate profile of us than our leading intelligence profilers undoubtedly do of them.

Recently, they released an online magazine laying out just how much the two U.S.-bound cargo-bay bombs that caused panic cost them: a mere $4,200 and the efforts of “less than six brothers” over three months. They even gave their plot a name, Operation Hemorrhage (and what they imagined hemorrhaging, it seems, was not American blood, but treasure).

Now, they're laughing at us for claiming the operation failed because -- thanks reportedly to a tip from Saudi intelligence -- those bombs didn’t go off. “This supposedly ‘foiled plot,’” they wrote, “will without a doubt cost America and other Western countries billions of dollars in new security measures. That is what we call leverage.”

They are, they claim, planning to use the "security phobia that is sweeping America” not to cause major casualties, but to blow a hole in the U.S. economy. "We knew that cargo planes are staffed by only a pilot and a co-pilot, so our objective was not to cause maximum casualties but to cause maximum losses to the American economy" via the multi-billion-dollar U.S. freight industry.

This is a new definition of asymmetrical warfare. The terrorists never have to strike an actual target. It’s not even incumbent upon them to build a bomb that works. Just about anything will do. To be successful, they just have to repeatedly send things in our direction, inciting the expectable Pavlovian reaction from the U.S. national security state, causing it to further tighten its grip (grope?) at yet greater taxpayer expense.

things can't go on this way much longer... somethin's gonna snap...

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How cutting the mortgage interest deduction might actually ACCELERATE foreclosures and walk-aways

as someone who is obsessed with keeping up with the daily outrages perpetrated on ordinary folks, i have obviously been aware that the catfood commission was recommending cutting out the mortgage interest deduction along with the unconscionable trimming of social security benefits and raising the retirement age (particularly when social security has absolutely NO connection to the budget deficit)... but, until my son brought it up in an email yesterday, i hadn't made the connection that cutting the mortgage interest deduction might actually accelerate the foreclosure crisis and speed up those sitting on the fence about walking away from underwater mortgages... i had emailed him about the pay freeze for federal workers (he and his wife are both government employees)... here's what he said...

I’m terrified about the bigger cuts that are proposed. Freezing the pay tables saves about 60 billion over the next 10 years. That is small potatoes to the 400 billion (doing away with Mortgage interest rate deduction) or the 3 trillion (middle class tax cuts possible expiring soon) Obama’s budget panel has proposed. If stuff like that occurs we will have no choice but to walk away from the mortgage on the house and who know what else.

personally, i think we're in the middle of the biggest heist in world history... the enormously rich get enormously richer and us poor bastards who actually have to WORK for a living continue to get screwed...

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Hillary Clinton pre-emptively deployed in Pakistan

only from the onion...

The White House released its own statement, 'We reserve the right to use Hillary Clinton when all other options have failed.'

Preliminary figures we have show that over 500 civilians suffered the full force of Mrs. Clinton and over 1,000 may have suffered from some exposure to her inflexible hair and pseudo-folksy hand gestures.

(thanks to forbidden knowledge tv...)

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Will Wikileaks take down the banksters?

julian assange is interviewed by forbes...

In a rare, two-hour interview conducted in London on November 11, Assange said that he’s still sitting on a trove of secret documents, about half of which relate to the private sector. And WikiLeaks’ next target will be a major American bank. “It will give a true and representative insight into how banks behave at the executive level in a way that will stimulate investigations and reforms, I presume,” he said, adding: “For this, there’s only one similar example. It’s like the Enron emails.”

[...]

It will give a true and representative insight into how banks behave at the executive level in a way that will stimulate investigations and reforms, I presume.

Usually when you get leaks at this level, it’s about one particular case or one particular violation. For this, there’s only one similar example. It’s like the Enron emails. Why were these so valuable? When Enron collapsed, through court processes, thousands and thousands of emails came out that were internal, and it provided a window into how the whole company was managed. It was all the little decisions that supported the flagrant violations.

This will be like that. Yes, there will be some flagrant violations, unethical practices that will be revealed, but it will also be all the supporting decision-making structures and the internal executive ethos that cames out, and that’s tremendously valuable. Like the Iraq War Logs, yes there were mass casualty incidents that were very newsworthy, but the great value is seeing the full spectrum of the war.

You could call it the ecosystem of corruption. But it’s also all the regular decision making that turns a blind eye to and supports unethical practices: the oversight that’s not done, the priorities of executives, how they think they’re fulfilling their own self-interest. The way they talk about it.

i think the level of transparency wikileaks has given to our obsessively secret government has been fantastic and long overdue... but it's the super-rich elites behind it all that really need to be exposed and maybe, just maybe, wikileaks can pull back the curtain on some of those bastards...

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Preparing to say goodbye

i've been living part-time in buenos aires for the past 6 1/2 years and in my little house here for 5... i arrived back in ba yesterday to spend my last week... i am giving up the place and doubt if i will be back any time soon... i love it here and my time in argentina has been a wonderful, emotional and intensely spiritual time for me... when i look back to where i was when i first came, i can honestly say i've grown enormously...

so, why am i leaving...?

for one thing, good friends i made here have moved away and i'm not here often enough or long enough to make the effort to re-establish a social circle worthwhile, and that's not counting the fact that my "social circles" are small, usually consisting of a very, very few special friends... for another thing, the limited time i get to spend plus the cost of maintaining a place and flying back and forth is no small investment...

however...

as i was in the taxi coming from the airport late yesterday morning, i was treated to yet another magnificent, gorgeous ba day and today is even better... all of the jacaranda trees are in bloom and the falling blossoms carpet the sidewalks and streets... the birds are singing and the breezes are fresh and cooling... in short, ba isn't making it easy for me to pack up and go...

ah, well...

times change... i will be 63 next week and i have no doubt there are more adventures ahead...

sigh...


Jacaranda tree in bloom

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Chris Hedges on hope - the REAL thing, not the hopey-changey kind

chris hedges, along with daniel ellsberg, medea benjamin, ray mcgovern and others are planning on chaining themselves to the white house fence on 16 december and, almost certainly, being arrested and going to jail...

Hope is not trusting in the ultimate goodness of Barack Obama, who, like Herod of old, sold out his people. It is not having a positive attitude or pretending that happy thoughts and false optimism will make the world better. Hope is not about chanting packaged campaign slogans or trusting in the better nature of the Democratic Party. Hope does not mean that our protests will suddenly awaken the dead consciences, the atrophied souls, of the plutocrats running Halliburton, Goldman Sachs, ExxonMobil or the government.

Hope does not mean we will halt the firing in Afghanistan of the next Hellfire missile, whose explosive blast sucks the oxygen out of the air and leaves the dead, including children, scattered like limp rag dolls on the ground. Hope does not mean we will reform Wall Street swindlers and speculators, or halt the pillaging of our economy as we print $600 billion in new money with the desperation of all collapsing states. Hope does not mean that the nation’s ministers and rabbis, who know the words of the great Hebrew prophets, will leave their houses of worship to practice the religious beliefs they preach. Most clerics like fine, abstract words about justice and full collection plates, but know little of real hope.

Hope knows that unless we physically defy government control we are complicit in the violence of the state. All who resist keep hope alive. All who succumb to fear, despair and apathy become enemies of hope. They become, in their passivity, agents of injustice. If the enemies of hope are finally victorious, the poison of violence will become not only the language of power but the language of opposition. And those who resist with nonviolence are in times like these the thin line of defense between a civil society and its disintegration.

Hope has a cost. Hope is not comfortable or easy. Hope requires personal risk. Hope does not come with the right attitude. Hope is not about peace of mind. Hope is an action. Hope is doing something. The more futile, the more useless, the more irrelevant and incomprehensible an act of rebellion is, the vaster and the more potent hope becomes. Hope never makes sense. Hope is weak, unorganized and absurd. Hope, which is always nonviolent, exposes in its powerlessness the lies, fraud and coercion employed by the state. Hope does not believe in force. Hope knows that an injustice visited on our neighbor is an injustice visited on us all. Hope posits that people are drawn to the good by the good. This is the secret of hope’s power and it is why it can never finally be defeated. Hope demands for others what we demand for ourselves. Hope does not separate us from them. Hope sees in our enemy our own face.

Hope is not for the practical and the sophisticated, the cynics and the complacent, the defeated and the fearful. Hope is what the corporate state, which saturates our airwaves with lies, seeks to obliterate. Hope is what our corporate overlords are determined to crush. Be afraid, they tell us. Surrender your liberties to us so we can make the world safe from terror. Don’t resist. Embrace the alienation of our cheerful conformity. Buy our products. Without them you are worthless. Become our brands. Do not look up from your electronic hallucinations to think. No. Above all do not think. Obey.

[...]

Any act of rebellion, any physical defiance of those who make war, of those who perpetuate corporate greed and are responsible for state crimes, anything that seeks to draw the good to the good, nourishes our souls and holds out the possibility that we can touch and transform the souls of others. Hope affirms that which we must affirm. And every act that imparts hope is a victory in itself.

more info on the 16 december protest can be found here...

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I cannot recall a president who generated so much excitement as a candidate but who turned out to be such a political dud as chief executive

so says robert kuttner...

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A Wikileaks lesson for all of us - there is no safety or confidentiality in electronic communication

in a way, it's almost schadenfreude... those of us who pay the slightest bit of attention have known for quite some time that everything we do electronically, whether it's an atm withdrawal or something as mundane as swiping a supermarket discount card, can be - and probably is - sniffed at the very least and more likely recorded somewhere in the vast terabytes - or petabytes or exabytes - of government databases... however, it's gratifying to see that the tables can be turned...

US embassy cables: The job of the media is not to protect the powerful from embarrassment

Clearly, there is no longer such a thing as a safe electronic archive, whatever computing's snake-oil salesmen claim. No organisation can treat digitised communication as confidential. An electronic secret is a contradiction in terms.

[...]

Words on paper can be made secure, electronic archives not. The leaks have blown a hole in the framework by which states guard their secrets. ... [T]he walls round policy formation and documentation are all but gone. All barriers are permeable.

and that's a good thing... let's hear it for transparency, even the inadvertent kind...

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F.A.S.T. - Future Attribute Screening Technology

look what our handlers have in store for us... this will make us almost nostalgic for pat-downs and full-body scans...

This is what's next
if they are not stopped now



oh boy...! how exciting...! i can't wait...

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Canine explosives detection beats the crap out of the full-body scanner

from brasscheck tv...



yesterday at dulles, i opted out of the full-body scan and got patted down instead... i wanted to check out for myself what all the fuss was about... no biggie, as it turned out... the guy was very deferential and completely appropriate... basically, it wasn't much different from the pat-downs and wanding i've experienced the rare times i've set off the metal detector... maybe they've taken the firestorm of publicity to heart and are backing off... otoh, i'm not a hot younger woman - or guy - so maybe the deferential part has to do with my mature, grandfatherly appearance...

anywayz...

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