Archive for the ‘internet/free speech’ Category

Wiki Leaks round up: the good, bad and unnoticed

Posted: December 9, 2010 by datechguy in internet/free speech, opinion/news
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The Wiki Leaks news continues to grow:

First some very ugly news from the Guardian:

A scandal involving foreign contractors employed to train Afghan policemen who took drugs and paid for young “dancing boys” to entertain them in northern Afghanistan caused such panic that the interior minister begged the US embassy to try and “quash” the story, according to one of the US embassy cables released by WikiLeaks.

The Lonely Conservative is rightly discussed as is Stacy.

Meanwhile Atlas points out some wikileaks stuff that continues to be ignored:

According to the latest WikiLeaks document “dump,” Saddam’s toxic arsenal, significantly reduced after the Gulf War, remained intact. Jihadists, insurgents and foreign (possibly Iranian) agitators turned to these stockpiles during the Iraq conflict and may have brewed up their own deadly agents, according to the WikiLeaks web site.

During that time, former Iraqi General Georges Sada, Saddam’s top commander, detailed the transfers of Iraq’s WMD. “There [were] weapons of mass destruction gone out from Iraq to Syria, and they must be found and returned to safe hands,” Mr. Sada said. “I am confident they were taken over.”

Color me unsurprised, but the rest of the media will totally ignore this.

Meanwhile Hackers attempt to wreak vengeance on Sarah Palin for daring to oppose the leaks:

The website and personal credit card information of former Gov. Sarah Palin were cyber-attacked today by Wikileaks supporters, the 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate tells ABC News in an email.

Hackers in London apparently affiliated with “Operation Payback” – a group of supporters of Julian Assange and Wikileaks – have tried to shut down SarahPac and have disrupted Sarah and Todd Palin’s personal credit card accounts.

“No wonder others are keeping silent about Assange’s antics,” Palin emailed. “This is what happens when you exercise the First Amendment and speak against his sick, un-American espionage efforts.”

This will guarantee them sympathy on MSNBC and with most of the MSM. Cubachi thinks it is foolish of them:

How stupid can these people be? They just proved that they’re not all about free speech. They are all about quelling and silencing opposition with fear, and destroying America’s infrastructure. A bunch of dangerous dolts.

For those of you who don’t think WikiLeaks is a terrorist organization, what does this say where they engage in cyber warfare against our country and innocent people?

I don’t think it’s stupidity, I think they recognize the left sympathy with wikileaks has nothing to do with speech and everything about hitting the US.

As for the Terrorist part, well lets ask an actual terrorist:

‘I Never Denounced’ W.U. Violence: Ayers Compares Weather Underground to WikiLeaks

Remember terrorists aren’t terrorist if they support the left.

Meanwhile Twitter has acted:

The group responsible for “hacking” several companies which have cut ties with and services to Wikileaks as well as Sarah Palin moments ago had their twitter account suspended.

Expect the get a life crowd to go after Twitter next, as they did against Mastercard as reported here:

In what they called “Operation Payback”, the network of online activists targeted firms including Mastercard and Visa, in the latest front of the battle over leaked US diplomatic cables.

The group, known as Anonymous and thought to be 1,500 to 2,000-strong, flooded the websites of the credit card companies, and that of the Swedish prosecution authority, with millions of bogus visits.

Their attack came after the financial giants, along with the online payment firm PayPal, announced they would no longer process donations to the anti-secrecy group.

Allahpundit says not so fast on the blame game:

I’m not sure how Tapper’s so sure who the culprit is. Wikileaks itself has been DDOS’d a bunch of times, presumably by freelance “hackers,” since the latest document drop. Maybe the London group did hit Palin and Mastercard, or maybe it’s copycats who also support Wikileaks, or maybe it’s freelancers looking to get in on the action for whatever reason. The ‘Net’s becoming a freefire DDOS zone, which makes it hard to keep track of who’s firing each of the bullets.

My Money’s on the Flemish Menace

Meanwhile there are those who are celebrating the wikileaks crowd such as the Russians:

According to Russia’s English-language television news Russia Today, the Kremlin thinks that Julian Assange is too important for a Time Magazine Person of the Year and needs more substantial recognition for his work — like, say, sharing the stage with Barack Obama with a Nobel Peace Prize. The Week has the lengthy video that is unintentionally hilarious as it explores whether the US or Israel’s assassins will get to Assange first.

The story is noteworthy for the number of truthers involved in it, meanwhile on the left coast:

An Army private jailed for allegedly leaking sensitive military data is a hero and should be freed, according to a resolution under consideration by the Berkeley City Council.

The council is expected to vote Tuesday on whether to declare its support for Pfc. Bradley Manning, who’s suspected of providing WikiLeaks with classified military documents and a video depicting an Army helicopter attack in Baghdad in which 11 civilians were killed.

Sister Toldaja asks the question:

Ummmm. Can we question their patriotism yet?

Yet? I never stopped. Remember during the 80 when all those anti-nuke groups hit Reagan and it was revealed that the Soviets funded those guys all those years. I’d be shocked if they didn’t have such a connection now.

I’ll give the last word belongs to the daily gut:

Look, I’m tired of people making this a huge “transparency” issue. Thank God Assange wasn’t alive during the French Resistance, or we’d be speaking Australian now.

Bottom line: the left loves Assange because he’s attacking America.

And our lives demand secrecy – whether in times of war, or warts.

That’s pretty much it.

Update: Glenn Reynolds 3:18 A.m.

SHOCKER: Berkeley City Council Plans Vote to Honor Wikileaks Leaker Bradley Manning.

My question: Why is this a Shocker?

Barrett Brown and Punching up to get attention

Posted: December 6, 2010 by datechguy in blogs, internet/free speech, opinion/news
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I’m looking at the series of posts on Barrett Brown by Robert Stacy McCain with some amazement. Next month it will be one year since I met Stacy McCain face to face for the first time and what a year it has been.

Now in theory one could say Mr. Brown was only following Mr. McCain’s rules for getting 1,000,000 hits namely Rule 1 via links and rule 4 via his attacks on Donald Douglas and threats of legal action

Might I humbly suggest that if one his hoping for links and attention from Robert Stacy McCain it is possible to achieve that without a threat of a lawsuit.

First of all Stacy’s hit on you should have been cause for rejoicing. I presume the goal was attention, and even more importantly sympathy from others on the left, then fine. It’s well-known that if you can get someone to “punch down” so to speak then you will get those increased hits and ratings (read MSM and Sarah Palin). Stacy being a man of honor would have likely ignored you but when you hit a Donald Douglas it put his muse into overdrive. One should have taken that as a badge of honor, pocketed the increased traffic and moved on.

Instead you decide to actually threaten Mr. McCain with a lawsuit. Amazing! I don’t know if you are independently wealthy or just a kid, but Barrett take it from someone old enough to be your father; not only is it not a manly thing its a foolish thing. It makes you seem weak and shallow and tells the world that a post from a man you’ve never met is enough to make you go running and crying and has only succeeded in giving him an instalanche.

Mind you McCain’s post have no chance of hurting your ability to earn a living, if that was the case then maybe action could be considered, it’s only effect would be to give you more attention than you apparently deserve and make “D”/ “C” list bloggers (like myself) decide you aren’t worth a link in the future.

If I may be so bold as to suggest, instead of making enemies make friends. Back when the McCain/Johnson wars were in full swing Stacy announced the impending nuptials of his oldest daughter and I thought: “What a great opportunity for Charles Johnson to make peace by offering congratulations saying something like:

“Mr. McCain our feud not withstanding; let me congratulate your daughter on her upcoming wedding and wish her the best and much happiness.” Note NOT an actual Charles Johnson quote

A man like Stacy McCain would have been compelled to acknowledge such a gracious act publicly and it would have been a chance to soften the relationship so that when they disagreed they could cross link, each get additional hits and perhaps even meet socially and mend some fences. Stacy is a notoriously social animal and is very amiable to such an approach. Alas it was not to be.

Weigel joins the axis of Fedora

May I humbly suggest as a person who through a series of fortuitous events has the honor of calling Stacy friend that the occasion of his daughter’s birthday is an opportunity for such an event. Consider sending a birthday greeting and dropping the foolish threats. Talk humbly and perhaps you can win a friend. After all when Dave Weigel was being hit all over the right side of the sphere Stacy McCain (while disagreeing with him) stood by his friend.

Play your cards right Barrett and someday that could be you joining the Axis of Fedora.

Take my advice, although my friendship with Mr. McCain has not led me to 1,000,000 hits a year (more like a quarter million) the rewards are things that your will enjoy for a lifetime. What a gift to give yourself during this Christmas Season.

Think about it.

Rob Schneider fails to take Laura Ingram’s advice

Posted: December 2, 2010 by datechguy in internet/free speech, oddities
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After a very nice segment on WCRN with Howie Carr promoting his Boston show, Rob Schneider has apparently decided he isn’t interested in attracting supporters of Sarah Palin to his stand-up show or the movie he is writing with this quotes at the end:

“I would xxxx Sarah Palin but I’d wear a condom because I wouldn’t want my xxxxx to catch stupid.”

Just the type of joke you want to tell between 6-7 p.m. in the evening isn’t it?

And of course the next step is to offend Obama supporters:

I wouldn’t hire Obama to run a Kinkos.

Well done Schneider. That doesn’t even get into this insistence first that Obama not say there were 57 states; then saying he must have been joking.

He still is a funny guy.

More than just a wiff of Fascism

Posted: November 27, 2010 by datechguy in internet/free speech
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The Eu and the fools who decided to give up their identities for the sake of what in my opinion amounts to a Franco German alliance sphere and the ability of a lot of elites to get themselves voted comfortable lives paid for by the citizenry, are in a panic.

As the Economic situation gets worse and worse and bailout after bailout is discussed the once invincible Euro zone is showing the inevitable cracks that such foolishness brings, to wit:

But look at your response to them: what they are being told as their government is collapsing is that it would be inappropriate for them to have a general election. In fact [EU Economic and Monetary Affairs] Commissioner [Olli] Rehn here said they had to agree to their budget first before they are allowed to have a general election.

Just who the hell do you think you people are? You are very, very dangerous people indeed: your obsession with creating this euro state means that you are happy to destroy democracy, you appear to be happy with millions and millions of people to be unemployed and to be poor.

Untold millions must suffer so that your euro dream can continue. Well it won’t work, because it’s Portugal next. With their debt levels of 325 percent of GDP they are the next ones on the list, and after that I suspect it will be Spain, and the bailout for Spain would be 7 times the size of Ireland, and at that moment all the bailout money has gone – there won’t be any more.

These people must be getting nervous because they have reached the point where they are escorting people out of the chamber because a Mr. Schultz’s feelings were hurt.

Nobody likes to be called a fascist but apparently Mr. Schultz and the folk who support him have a much thinner skin than those who they oppose as pointed out by Daniel Hannan in the Telegraph:

Several aspects of this episode should alarm us. First, there is the democratic objection. Surely it is up to the electorate to decide who sits in a legislature. If Bloom can be denied his place by his fellow MEPs, what is to stop the federalist majority voting to expel every Eurosceptic?

Then there is the liberal objection. In a free society, the right to say what you will trumps the right not to be offended. We should allow people to be ignorant, ill-mannered, obnoxious; to condemn themselves by their boorishness.

Above all, though, there is the sheer one-sidedness. I’ve blogged before about the way in which Euro-integrationists routinely dismiss their opponents as Nazis. The leader of the European Liberals, Graham Watson, has said that Eurosceptics put him in mind of “the National Socialists in the German Reichstag”. In the run-up to the French referendum on the European Constitution, Margot Wallström, then Sweden’s Commissioner, travelled to the Theresiendstadt concentration camp to and told “No” voters that this was where their ideology would lead. Only last week, Herman Van Rompuy, the Euro-President, said “we have together to fight the danger of a new Euro-scepticism. Fear leads to egoism, egoism leads to nationalism, and nationalism leads to war”.

Yet they still sit in fact check out this clip where that same Mr. Schultz throws out the “fascist” label against a person who makes the unforgivable sin of asking for the financial books to be opened.

Bottom line, when bloated dictatorships and or bureaucracies she their power and privileges start to slip away they tend to get angrier and panic ridden and more oppressive. As Andrew Stutterford says at NRO:

But then the EU parliament is not about freedom. Never has been. Never will be.

Indeed. Via Sissy Willis on Twitter

Update: Cubachi comments:

If anything, I want to thank Mr. Bloom for sticking to his principles and proving once and for all, the pathetic nature of the European Union. If only this socialist wet dream can be thrown in the dustbin of history. I think this can be the beginning of the end of the UK’s membership.

Exactly

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