READ THE CABLES!

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Sex slavery:

He urged the US State Department to shut down a reporter he heard was snooping around, and was horrified that a rumored videotape of the party might surface. He predicted that any story about the party would "endanger lives." He said that his government had arrested two Afghan police and nine Afghan civilians on charges of "purchasing a service from a child" in connection with the party, but that he was worried about the image of their "foreign mentors," by which he apparently meant DynCorp. American diplomats told him to chill. They apparently had a better handle on our media than Atmar, because when a report of the party finally did emerge, it was neutered to the point of near-falsehood.

Make so much noise that they will cease trying to harm anyone connected with the TRUTH.

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love, 99
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close as i've come to finding something like the lost bit

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I am almost certain it was on the New Yorker Out Loud thing and he was talking with Jane Meyer and one or two others from the magazine, but it could have been him at a journalism conference or lort only knows where in the bazillion places I've gone to hear and see Sy Hersh. I know Jane's in on it and that I heard her saying it, too, but I'm not certain I was hearing them on this at the same time or if I heard the one and then the other, but, dammit, I really DID hear it, from their own mouths. But, for now, this interview with der Spiegel from a couple months ago is all I've got.

I'm deciding that I'm not hearing them roaring right now because they are too busy cranking out cables for WikiLeaks to look up. I certainly would expect to have heard from Jane Meyer and Sy Hersh on this by now... and loudly. The ONLY reason I can think of that would satisfy me on their apparent silence is that they are working too hard.

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In fact, more people should be working too hard on it to look up.

From Jefferson to Assange
Posted on Dec 7, 2010
By Robert Scheer

All you need to know about Julian Assange’s value as a crusading journalist is that The New York Times and most of the world’s other leading newspapers have led daily with important news stories based on his WikiLeaks releases. All you need to know about the collapse of traditional support for the constitutional protection of a free press is that Dianne Feinstein, the centrist Democrat who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, has called for Assange “to be vigorously prosecuted for espionage.”

Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Feinstein, who strongly supported the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, has the audacity to call for the imprisonment of the man who, more than any other individual, has allowed the public to learn the truth about those disastrous imperial adventures—facts long known to Feinstein as head of the Intelligence Committee but never shared with the public she claims to represent.

Feinstein represents precisely the government that Thomas Jefferson had in mind when he said, in defense of unfettered freedom of the press, “[W]ere it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

In the 1787 letter in which he wrote those words, Jefferson was reflecting the deep wisdom of a political leader who often had been excoriated by a vicious press that would make the anarchist-inflected comments of an Assange seem mild in comparison. More than 35 years later, after having suffered many more vitriolic press attacks, Jefferson reiterated his belief in a free press, in all its vagaries, as the foundation of a democracy. In an 1823 letter to Lafayette, Jefferson warned: “The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted to be freely expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure.”

It is precisely that agitation that so alarms Feinstein, for the inconvenient truths she has concealed in her Senate role would have indeed shocked many of those who voted for her. She knew in real time that Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 attack, yet she voted to send young Americans to kill and be killed based on what she knew to be lies. It is her duplicity, along with the leaders of both political parties, that now stands exposed by the WikiLeaks documents.

That is why U.S. governmental leaders will now employ the massive power of the state to discredit and destroy Assange, who dared let the public in on the depths of official deceit—a deceit that they hide behind in making their claims of protecting national security. Claims mocked by released cables that show that our puppets in Iraq and Afghanistan are deeply corrupt and anti-democratic, and that al-Qaida continues to find its base of support not in those countries but rather in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, the very nations we arm and protect. The notion that the official tissue of lies enhances our security is rejected by the growing strength of radical Islam in the region, as evidenced by the success of Iran, the main benefactor of our invasion of Iraq, as the leaked cables make clear.

The pretend patriots who use the national security argument to gut what remains of our most important security asset—our constitutional guarantees of a truly free press—are just what President George Washington feared when in his farewell address he warned “against the mischiefs of foreign intrigue, to guard against the Impostures of pretended patriotism. …”

The pretended patriotism of Feinstein, the first Democrat to co-sponsor the bill extending the U.S. Patriot Act, represents the death of the Democratic Party as a protector of our freedoms. As a California resident, I will not vote for her again, no matter how dastardly a right-wing Republican opponent she might face. There is no lesser evil to be found in one who would so cavalierly imprison practitioners of a free press.

That is the issue here, pure and simple. It is unconscionable to target Assange for publishing documents on the Internet that mainstream media outlets have attested had legitimate news value. As in the historic case in which Daniel Ellsberg gave The New York Times the Pentagon Papers exposé of the official lies justifying the Vietnam War, Assange is acting as the reporter here, and thus his activities must be shielded by the First Amendment’s guarantee of journalistic freedom.

Actually Ellsberg’s position, as morally strong as it was, was weaker than that of Assange, in that the former Marine and top Pentagon adviser was working at the government-funded Rand Corp., where he had agreed to rules about the handling of classified information, including the Pentagon Papers. Assange operates under no such restraints and is an even clearer example of the journalist who ferrets out news and attempts to report it. He had no special clearance that provided him access, and what he did was no different from what the editors of The New York Times did in publishing news that was fit to print.

It is outrageous for any journalist, or respecter of what every American president has claimed is our inalienable, God-given right to a free press, not to join in Assange’s defense on this issue, as distinct from what increasingly appear to be trumped-up charges that led to his voluntary arrest on Tuesday in London in a case involving his personal behavior. Abandon Assange and you abandon the bedrock of our republic: the public’s right to know.

Less verbose and more colorful, please.

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love, 99
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guess the irony wasn't lost on wikileaks either

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I received an email, right before the debacle in my not-a-tub, that made my stomach start hopping. Not only did it link me to some TOTAL crap from someone I felt sure would know better, but the email was from someone I know who is taking my word for it, but warily, because of his suspicions about the Mossad. More on that in a moment, but first:

Following the detention of Wikileaks founder and editor-in-chief Julian Assange, Wikileaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson said:

“Today, Wikileaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange was refused bail by a UK court. While we are troubled by this bizarre decision, we know Julian is grateful for the support of both his legal team and prominent figures such as Ken Loach, Jemima Khan and John Pilger.

“However, this will not stifle Wikileaks. The release of the US Embassy Cables – the biggest leak in history – will still continue. This evening, the latest batch of cables were released, and our media partners released their next batch of stories.

“We will not be gagged, either by judicial action or corporate censorship. Today Visa joined Mastercard, Paypal, Amazon, EveryDNS and others in cutting off their links.

“Wikileaks is still online. The full site is duplicated in more than 500 locations. Every day, the cables are loaded more than 50 million times.

“US Senator Joe Lieberman today attacked the New York Times for its decision to publish the cables, just days after calling for companies to boycott Wikileaks.

“Just minutes later, the State Department announced the US will host next year’s UNESCO Press Freedom day. The irony is not lost on us. We hope in future, UNESCO celebrates press freedom somewhere where it exists.”

I don't know if it was the epsom salt I dumped into my not-a-tub, or punching through the far extreme of exasperation, but I went limp in there... insofar as one can do limp and keep one's mangled finger out of the water. Just in case, I'm calling for a truckload of epsom salt to be delivered to this address... tub or not-a-tub.

IF YOU READ THE CABLES YOU WILL KNOW THIS ISN'T GOSSIP AND IT ISN'T A MOSSAD OP.

Just because a few dickless fiends who are making a fine living off our loathing for Israel got out in front of this in their slobbering rabies to cover up their already diminutive members in the glare of comparison with a REAL man—AND because you are too damn jaded, or too damn lazy, or too damn kneejerk paranoid, or too damn scared, or too damn busy, or too damn scattered to READ THE DAMN CABLES—doesn't mean you should just succumb to the damn temptation to go along with them.

PLEASE!

EXIT your mental traps, your internal jail cells! They're NOT locked! Just LOOK.

I don't have a life! A ridiculous set of conspiring circumstances landed me stranded in bumfuck nowhere, without the wherewithal to escape. Gorgeous as it is here, I have NOT been able to find something with which, or someone/s local with whom, to engage in a manner that satisfies my need to be of USE to sentient beings. This leaves me with many hours of every day for the last five years to look DEEPLY into whatever I feel is demanding that scrutiny. I had been a top-level professional scrutinizer my entire adult life and have a bewilderingly high IQ... to name but a couple of the things that promote my ability to assure you that, no, my eyes are not deceiving me, Assange is for real.

I demand—if you are STILL not satisfied—that you go lock yourself into a closet until all the clanging mental contents preventing your sight have dropped out of your heads.

I REALLY MUST INSIST!

I know we haven't seen this big a hero in decades, but DON'T let that blow it for all of us now.

READ THE CABLES!!!

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love, 99
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i'm getting into my not-a-tub

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Try not to think about it....

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No. Really.

Officials: US drops demand for settlement freeze
By MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press – Tue Dec 7, 5:38 pm ET

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama has abandoned attempts to persuade Israel to slow West Bank settlement activity, officials said Tuesday, dealing a major blow to the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and one of the president's top foreign policy initiatives.

After months of trying to broker a formula under which Israel would impose a new, temporary settlement freeze in return for U.S. promises and incentives, two American officials said the administration has concluded that course won't work. The decision was expected to be announced later Tuesday.

Talks stalled in September, barely a month after they started. The Palestinians refused to return to direct negotiations until a new freeze was in place following the expiration of an earlier, 10-month Israeli slowdown in settlement expansion.

Now, said the U.S. officials, American pressure for a three-month moratorium and the U.S. incentives package, which included political, diplomatic and security assurances for Israel, are off the table. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

The White House's bid for a Middle East peace settlement was a longshot from the start, but its apparent breakdown comes at a time when the administration is struggling on a number of fronts abroad. There is slow progress in the Afghan war, increasing friction with China and the embarrassing deluge of confidential diplomatic cables released by the website WikiLeaks.

The U.S. officials said the administration was not giving up efforts to broker a peace deal and noted that Israeli and Palestinian negotiators will visit Washington next week for consultations.

The U.S. will be talking with both sides in the coming days, one of the officials said, while Arab states and other interested countries also will be consulted.

However, the administration's decision to drop support for the Palestinians' key demand could mean the end of the moribund peace process.

Obama had made Israeli-Palestinian peace a major goal of his administration, appointing seasoned peace negotiator George Mitchell as his special Mideast envoy on his second day in office.

Mitchell made dozens of trips to the region to get the parties to agree to direct talks. In early September, with the expiration of the initial slowdown looming, Obama brought Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas along with the leaders of Jordan and Egypt to launch the face-to-face discussions, which failed.

Neither Israeli nor Palestinian officials would comment on the developments in Washington before their official announcement.

Earlier Tuesday, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said the U.S. had halted talks with Israel on settlement activity because Washington was distracted by the WikiLeaks release of secret documents.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley responded by saying that Israel may have been preoccupied with putting out a huge forest fire that burned until Sunday.

The U.S. had been pressing Israel to renew a moratorium on new settlement construction in exchange for security guarantees and diplomatic assurances of support. Israel wanted those in writing, as well as a pledge that east Jerusalem would be exempt from the moratorium.

The Palestinians refused to return to the peace talks unless Israel halted all building in the West Bank and east Jerusalem — lands they want for part of their future state.

Peace talks began in September but ground to a halt three weeks later after Israel's original moratorium on new West Bank construction expired.

Netanyahu returned from a November trip to the U.S. with a list of guarantees, including 20 next-generation stealth fighter planes and U.S. pledges to veto anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations, according to Israeli officials.

In exchange, Israel was asked to renew the expired limits on settlement construction.

Days later the deal snagged after members of Netanyahu's Cabinet demanded a written pledge from the U.S. that the moratorium would exclude east Jerusalem. Such a pledge never materialized.

The U.S. had wanted a moratorium in the hopes that it would allow Israel and the Palestinians to make enough progress in drawing their future borders to make the settlement question irrelevant.

With borders determined, Israel could resume building on any territories it would expect to keep under a final peace deal.

But Israeli officials said Tuesday that short of an understanding on borders, a crisis could erupt if Israel agreed to the freeze sought by the U.S.

Now, said Israeli officials, insisting on anonymity because of the sensitivity of the contacts, the U.S. and Israel have agreed on a statement that "in the coming days and weeks, efforts will continue toward finding ways to renew the direct negotiations in order to reach a framework that would lead in the end to an agreement between the two sides."

I can barely move for the wrath shooting ice crystals through my veins!

Mister North has NOT come through with my barn loft and clawfoot tub. I'm probably going to be dead first.

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I think I will look at it this way: Maybe it will get the anti-Israel profiteers to stop masturbating on Julian Assange.

I have to look for the silver lining. Maybe that will crash JP Morgan too.

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love, 99
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i'm now looking for big journalists being vocal about this

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I have been trying to watch Democracy Now!'s coverage of this, but it seems their site is being slammed... VERY hard to get on it and stay on it... which is good in one way and terrible in another... maybe best to go straight to the Real Video broadcast or download the mp3 than to try to move around the site.

Don't shoot messenger for revealing uncomfortable truths
The Australian | December 08, 2010 | 12:00AM
by Julian Assange

WIKILEAKS deserves protection, not threats and attacks.

IN 1958 a young Rupert Murdoch, then owner and editor of Adelaide's The News, wrote: "In the race between secrecy and truth, it seems inevitable that truth will always win."

His observation perhaps reflected his father Keith Murdoch's expose that Australian troops were being needlessly sacrificed by incompetent British commanders on the shores of Gallipoli. The British tried to shut him up but Keith Murdoch would not be silenced and his efforts led to the termination of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign.

Nearly a century later, WikiLeaks is also fearlessly publishing facts that need to be made public.

I grew up in a Queensland country town where people spoke their minds bluntly. They distrusted big government as something that could be corrupted if not watched carefully. The dark days of corruption in the Queensland government before the Fitzgerald inquiry are testimony to what happens when the politicians gag the media from reporting the truth.

These things have stayed with me. WikiLeaks was created around these core values. The idea, conceived in Australia, was to use internet technologies in new ways to report the truth.

WikiLeaks coined a new type of journalism: scientific journalism. We work with other media outlets to bring people the news, but also to prove it is true. Scientific journalism allows you to read a news story, then to click online to see the original document it is based on. That way you can judge for yourself: Is the story true? Did the journalist report it accurately?

Democratic societies need a strong media and WikiLeaks is part of that media. The media helps keep government honest. WikiLeaks has revealed some hard truths about the Iraq and Afghan wars, and broken stories about corporate corruption.

People have said I am anti-war: for the record, I am not. Sometimes nations need to go to war, and there are just wars. But there is nothing more wrong than a government lying to its people about those wars, then asking these same citizens to put their lives and their taxes on the line for those lies. If a war is justified, then tell the truth and the people will decide whether to support it.

If you have read any of the Afghan or Iraq war logs, any of the US embassy cables or any of the stories about the things WikiLeaks has reported, consider how important it is for all media to be able to report these things freely.

WikiLeaks is not the only publisher of the US embassy cables. Other media outlets, including Britain's The Guardian, The New York Times, El Pais in Spain and Der Spiegel in Germany have published the same redacted cables.

Yet it is WikiLeaks, as the co-ordinator of these other groups, that has copped the most vicious attacks and accusations from the US government and its acolytes. I have been accused of treason, even though I am an Australian, not a US, citizen. There have been dozens of serious calls in the US for me to be "taken out" by US special forces. Sarah Palin says I should be "hunted down like Osama bin Laden", a Republican bill sits before the US Senate seeking to have me declared a "transnational threat" and disposed of accordingly. An adviser to the Canadian Prime Minister's office has called on national television for me to be assassinated. An American blogger has called for my 20-year-old son, here in Australia, to be kidnapped and harmed for no other reason than to get at me.

And Australians should observe with no pride the disgraceful pandering to these sentiments by Julia Gillard and her government. The powers of the Australian government appear to be fully at the disposal of the US as to whether to cancel my Australian passport, or to spy on or harass WikiLeaks supporters. The Australian Attorney-General is doing everything he can to help a US investigation clearly directed at framing Australian citizens and shipping them to the US.

Prime Minister Gillard and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have not had a word of criticism for the other media organisations. That is because The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel are old and large, while WikiLeaks is as yet young and small.

We are the underdogs. The Gillard government is trying to shoot the messenger because it doesn't want the truth revealed, including information about its own diplomatic and political dealings.

Has there been any response from the Australian government to the numerous public threats of violence against me and other WikiLeaks personnel? One might have thought an Australian prime minister would be defending her citizens against such things, but there have only been wholly unsubstantiated claims of illegality. The Prime Minister and especially the Attorney-General are meant to carry out their duties with dignity and above the fray. Rest assured, these two mean to save their own skins. They will not.

Every time WikiLeaks publishes the truth about abuses committed by US agencies, Australian politicians chant a provably false chorus with the State Department: "You'll risk lives! National security! You'll endanger troops!" Then they say there is nothing of importance in what WikiLeaks publishes. It can't be both. Which is it?

It is neither. WikiLeaks has a four-year publishing history. During that time we have changed whole governments, but not a single person, as far as anyone is aware, has been harmed. But the US, with Australian government connivance, has killed thousands in the past few months alone.

US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates admitted in a letter to the US congress that no sensitive intelligence sources or methods had been compromised by the Afghan war logs disclosure. The Pentagon stated there was no evidence the WikiLeaks reports had led to anyone being harmed in Afghanistan. NATO in Kabul told CNN it couldn't find a single person who needed protecting. The Australian Department of Defence said the same. No Australian troops or sources have been hurt by anything we have published.

But our publications have been far from unimportant. The US diplomatic cables reveal some startling facts:

► The US asked its diplomats to steal personal human material and information from UN officials and human rights groups, including DNA, fingerprints, iris scans, credit card numbers, internet passwords and ID photos, in violation of international treaties. Presumably Australian UN diplomats may be targeted, too.

► King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia asked the US to attack Iran.

► Officials in Jordan and Bahrain want Iran's nuclear program stopped by any means available.

► Britain's Iraq inquiry was fixed to protect "US interests".

► Sweden is a covert member of NATO and US intelligence sharing is kept from parliament.

► The US is playing hardball to get other countries to take freed detainees from Guantanamo Bay. Barack Obama agreed to meet the Slovenian President only if Slovenia took a prisoner. Our Pacific neighbour Kiribati was offered millions of dollars to accept detainees.

In its landmark ruling in the Pentagon Papers case, the US Supreme Court said "only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government". The swirling storm around WikiLeaks today reinforces the need to defend the right of all media to reveal the truth.

I hope you are not here because you are out there kicking ass and taking names to put this right.

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love, 99
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new way to donate to wikileaks

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I am only a little skeptical about this. It's a great way to get your startup off the ground and so we should go for it... while remembering the pressure for them to cave and desist will be immense... not as immense as it was before the sociopathic murderating fucks got Assange in custody though.

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It has occurred to me that we should do the "trust but verify" thing on this and any other outlets for WikiLeaks donations... and then I got an email from Old Uncle Dave mentioning the same thing... and, all day, I have been looking for this XIPWIRE thing to show up on the donations page....

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love, 99
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i'm going to tell you my theory

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As I finally blurted out the other day, there are some highly respected journalists in Julian's corner. They are continually blunted in their possible usefulness by their high-level sources being unable—unwilling—to go on the record. Sy Hersh, for one, we're all certain, is SICK of never being able to name his sources, and those sources would LOVE to be able to put out the raw material anonymously, but there has been no mechanism.

So Wikileaks very suddenly—mystically even—got worlds bigger and more threatening.

When Bradley Manning was arrested, the controversy was flying about the inanity of him bragging about it to a mole in a chatroom, and making people plenty suspicious. Then—on one of my forays into the vapid—a field trip taken to just calm the hell down by means of purposely offending myself with exposure to the cheap and superficial—I spotted a piece of gossip at Boing Boing about outing Bradley Manning... some wisp of Manning having wanted a sex change operation.

This turned into a possible theory to explain why Manning might volunteer to be the accused leaker. If he went along quietly, he'd get his sex change and a whole new identity.

WHY would the government want a fake leaker that badly? They knew it was somebody high up and wanted either to flush them out, or scare the pee out of them... or both. I feel the truth is somewhere along these lines. The documents in all these monster releases have been genuine. Don't give me any of your shit about that because I've been reading them and so has Paul Craig Roberts. They're not bogus. They're the real deal, and they are NOT only focused on Iran and exculpatory toward Israel, and they CERTAINLY are not all just gossip and no big deal. They are as huge an embarrassment and problem for the fuckers running our show as advertised.

If you go back to that video page, you will find on one of the videos, at a press conference about the Collateral Murder release, Assange is being questioned about State Department cables. He flat out denies having them. He doesn't do that. Or not if he has something. If he has something, he won't confirm it. He does not lie about it. Manning was already in jail. Manning is not charged with stealing these cables... if I have that right... I saw that somewhere. No. The government knew the cables had been taken, but not who took them. They were nuts to get out ahead of this and squelch it to whatever extent possible, NO MATTER WHAT IT TAKES.

Somebody huge gave all this material to WikiLeaks and the big boys want it stopped. They have set the entire MSM and most of our legislative branch on fire with fear for their positions if they don't make stark raving jackasses out of themselves to frighten the bone marrow out of everybody—and DON'T tell me this isn't terrifying you—but most especially those trying to bring the psychotic power movers down.

ALL OUR LIVES DEPEND ON BRINGING THEM DOWN.

Julian Assange stepped up to the plate, at great, great, great risk to life and limb, and you KNOW he will not cough up with the name of his source. You KNOW it. You also can see all around you that all the stops have been pulled out in the effort to snuff out the fullness of this release and find the leak. Torturing murderating fucks now have Julian Assange in custody.

I think the only way he gets out of custody is if the real leaker steps up.

DON'T JUST SIT THERE. THIS HAS TO BE FIXED.

He broke no laws. Bogus sex crime charges in Sweden. Servers yanked. Funding yanked: PayPal; frozen Swiss bank account; MasterCard and Visa won't let you charge a donation. Legislators screaming that he's a traitor when he's not even a citizen. Calls for his assassination. The goddam Attorney General getting up in front of cameras to insist they'll find a way to hang him by his toenails. THINK about that! None of it is legal and all of it unethical! They're doing it anyway.

Is Jack Ruby lurking in London?

YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON STOPPING THIS. WHY IS IT HAPPENING?

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Oh, oh, and for all you partisan nitwits:

WHERE HAS YOUR SAINTED FREE SPEECH ADVOCATE BEEN FOR THIS?

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And don't forget to keep reading the cables. WikiLeaks is still operating and you must realize by now that reading that stuff yourself is vital.

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love, 99
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and anyway i've been 99 so long i almost don't answer to anything else

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I have NEVER completely understood the human obsession with naming things, nailing them down to the point where we can delude ourselves we have them completely pegged. It's a bad mental trap.

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love, 99
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please help me think how to be the most help

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I am wondering if I can't offer myself to Assange's attorneys....

I'm REALLY upset about this BIG TIME. I mean, I know I'm always mad about everything and I've been screaming about this stuff forever, but this past week has been the real life scenario I have been dreading for SO long, and it's all coming down around someone I feel is one of the ridiculously few true human bodhisattvas on Planet Earth. He's actually wittingly taken aim at THE problem. Actually risked everything for all of us, even the dumbfucks who are clueless. My insides are boxing with the need to go bodily to be of use to him.

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I hope I even understand how to use the key... should it ever become necessary.

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Glenn Greenwald does a great job of underscoring the reasons for my dire state of alarm.

Just to underscore the climate of lawless initmidation that has been created: before WikiLeaks was on many people's radars (i.e., before the Apache video release), I wrote about the war being waged on them by the Pentagon, interviewed Assange, and urged people to donate money to them. In response, numerous people asked — both in comments and via email — whether they would be in danger, could incur legal liability for providing material support to Terrorism or some other crime, if they donated to WikiLeaks. Those were American citizens expressing that fear over an organization which had never been remotely charged with any wrongdoing.

Similarly, I met several weeks ago with an individual who once worked closely with WikiLeaks, but since stopped because he feared that his country — which has a very broad extradition treaty with the U.S. — would arrest him and turn him over to the Americans upon request. He knew he had violated no laws, but given that he's a foreigner, he feared — justifiably — that he could easily be held by the United States without charges, denied all sorts of basic rights under the Patriot Act, and otherwise be subject to a system of "justice" which recognizes few limits or liberties, especially when dealing with foreigners accused of aiding Terrorists.

All the oppressive, lawless policies of the last decade — lawless detention, Guantanamo, disappearing people to CIA black sites, rendition, the torture regime, denial of habeas corpus, drones, assassinations, private mercenary forces, etc. — were designed, first and foremost, to instill exactly this fear, to deter any challenge. Many of these policies continue, and that climate of fear thus endures (see this comment from today as but one of many examples). As the treatment just thus far of WikiLeaks and Assange demonstrates, that reaction — though paralyzing and counter-productive — is not irrational. And one thing is for sure: there is nothing the U.S. Government could do — no matter how lawless or heinous — which (with rare exception) would provoke the objections of the American establishment media.

I'm going to make the most embarrassingly sucky guerrilla, you guys.

This won't be pretty.

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love, 99
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don't drink and drive

[click image — WARNING, this will pin your ears back but good.]

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My prickly boyfriend, Sam, sent me this image to express his love for me 'n' my blog.... I love him back.

Have been trying to pay attention to my life around here today and even out in my fright about all the blatantly fascist moves being made by our government, our hopey/changey shit government. Had to go to town to pay bills, move my no money, stock back up on things to bandage my mangled finger, and noticed a sort of detent with my eighth dimension go-cart is developing, which is good because I don't have the room for all its bells and whistles vexing me while I try to get to the store.

A NUMBER OF MY FRIENDS ARE JOINING IN YANKING THEIR FUNDS FROM BIG BANKS TOMORROW.

I did it today.

Anyway, according to the email from one of my bubbas, this video at the image link is on TV in Australia. I gotta say, if this doesn't do it, you are definitely drinking too much.

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love, 99
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truth is beautiful

[click image — If you don't have time for the whole thing, at least listen to the last one.]

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Someone else is awfully pissed off about your ingratitude:

What the Wiki-Saga Teaches Us
2 December 2010
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

The reaction to WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange tells us all we need to know about the total corruption of our “modern” world, which in fact is a throwback to the Dark Ages.

Some member of the United States government released to WikiLeaks the documents that are now controversial. The documents are controversial, because they are official US documents and show all too clearly that the US government is a duplicitous entity whose raison d’etre is to control every other government.

The media, not merely in the US but also throughout the English speaking world and Europe, has shown its hostility to WikiLeaks. The reason is obvious. WikiLeaks reveals truth, while the media covers up for the US government and its puppet states.

Why would anyone with a lick of sense read the media when they can read original material from WikiLeaks? The average american reporter and editor must be very angry that his/her own cowardice is so clearly exposed by Julian Assange. The american media is a whore, whereas the courageous blood of warriors runs through WikiLeaks’ veins.

Just as american politicians want Bradley Manning executed because he revealed crimes of the US government, they want Julian Assange executed. In the past few days the more notorious of the dumbshits that sit in the US Congress have denounced Assange as a “traitor to america.” What total ignorance. Assange is an Australian, not an american citizen. To be a traitor to america, one has to be of the nationality. An Australian cannot be a traitor to america any more than an american can be a traitor to Australia. But don’t expect the morons who represent the lobbyists to know this much.

Mike Huckabee, the redneck baptist preacher who was governor of arkansas and, to america’s already overwhelming shame, was third runner up to the Republican presidential nomination, has called for Assange’s execution. So here we have a “man of God” calling for the US government to murder an Australian citizen. And americans wonder why the rest of the world hates their guts.

The material leaked from the US government to WikiLeaks shows that the US government is an extremely disreputable gang of gangsters. The US government was able to get British prime minister Brown to “fix” the official Chilcot Investigation into how former prime minister Tony Blair manipulated and lied the British government into being mercenaries for the US invasion of Iraq. One of the “diplomatic” cables released has UK Defense Ministry official Jon Day promising the United States government that prime minister Brown’s government has “put measures in place to protect your interests.”

Other cables show the US government threatening Spanish prime minister Zapatero, ordering him to stop his criticisms of the Iraq war or else. I mean, really, how dare these foreign governments to think that they are sovereign.

Not only foreign governments are under the US thumb. So is Amazon.com. Joe Lieberman from Connecticut, who is Israel’s most influential senator in the US Senate, delivered sufficiently credible threats to Amazon to cause the company to oust WikiLeaks content from their hosting service.

So there you have it. On the one hand the US government and the prostitute american media declare that there is nothing new in the hundreds of thousands of documents, yet on the other hand both pull out all stops to shut down WikiLeaks and its founder. Obviously, despite the US government’s denials, the documents are extremely damaging. The documents show that the US government is not what it pretends to be.

Assange is in hiding. He fears CIA and Mossad assassination, and to add to his troubles the government of Sweden has changed its mind, perhaps as a result of american persuasion and money, about sex charges that the Swedish government had previously dismissed for lack of credibility. If reports are correct, two women, who possibly could be CIA or Mossad assets, have brought sex charges against Assange. One claims that she was having consensual sexual intercourse with him, but that he didn’t stop when she asked him to when the condom broke.

Think about this for a minute. Other than male porn stars who are bored with it all, how many men can stop at the point of orgasm or when approaching orgasm? How does anyone know where Assange was in the process of the sex act?

Would a real government that had any integrity and commitment to truth try to blacken the name of the prime truth teller of our time on the basis of such flimsy charges?

Obviously, Sweden has become another two-bit punk puppet government of the US.

The US government has got away with telling lies for so long that it no longer hesitates to lie in the most blatant way. WikiLeaks released a US classified document signed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that explicitly orders US diplomats to spy on UN Security council officials and on the Secretary General of the United Nations. The cable is now in the public record. No one challenges its authenticity. Yet, today the Obama regime, precisely White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, declared that Hillary had never ordered or even asked US officials to spy on UN officials.

As Antiwar.com asked: Who do you believe, the printed word with Hillary’s signature or the White House?

Anyone who believes the US government about anything is the epitome of gullibility.

Oh, at least.

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SING IT, PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS!

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O Canada!

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love, 99
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about that arab support for bombing iran?

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Uhm... not so much.

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love, 99
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seems to me 3 + 1 in that tri-border area is bad math

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Britain's Guardian has definitely stretched the meaning of this cable even more than the Ambassador was stretching the meaning of "terrorism" to have something to report. It came directly on the heels of THIS ONE, wherein it reports a cop "admitting" "in public" that A Muslim who had been arrested in Brazil "on hate crimes-related" charges was "linked to" al-Qa'eda. Ahem.

We MIGHT be talking about ONE guy who in some way seemed to give material support to The Latrine, and, indeed, "KUBISKE" seems well-pleased about this "progress" as it affects the possible enhancement of dividends from the oft-mentioned 3 Plus 1. The 3 is Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay. The 1 is the United States. They meet to discuss security and law enforcement in their shared borders area. What is wrong with this picture? WHAT are we doing in such a powwow and DID we impose it on them to begin with? It sounds to me as though we did. It sounds to me as though we are just infiltrating their sovereignty to the greatest extent possible and this global hissy we pitched over terrorists we made up is succeeding in getting our fascists in where they were never allowed before.

That "with us or against us" fist waving thing Dubya did was about you-let-us-into-your-security-mechanisms-or-we-will-fuck-you-up. It worked. Everywhere.

And, now, how many are going to glimpse at that headline and think Brazil is a hotbed of Islamist killers?

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On an unfortunately related note, the CIA Office of Inspector General report on the "Airbridge Denial Program" is out, and is a very big PDF, so if you want to read it, or skim it, I heavily advise you right click THIS to download it. Much easier to use your reader if you want to get a better idea about the ways the United States "partners" with Latin American governments in furtherance of our multifarious wars on awful stuff... terrorism, drugs, human trafficking, DECENCY....

Seems that missionary and her daughter shot down in April of 2001 in Peru were victims of the CIA's bright idea to just shoot down planes they felt were carrying drugs. It was "routine"... and probably still is. Even if they were CERTAIN the planes were carrying drugs, just shooting them down, especially in someone else's country, but really ANYWHERE, is NOT okay, okay? I mean, do you even start to think Rafael Correa is too crabby with our people in Ecuador? I don't. I'm amazed any of them let any of us in for any reason.

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love, 99
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once and future heroes

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Please stop to think what is at stake. Realize it. Drop everything and SEE it. Quit entertaining yourself or distracting yourself or whatever the hell you call what you're doing and take in what's actually happening. Our government IS in FACT a dictatorship, no matter what the pose, if they can do what they ARE doing. Topping it ALL is how afraid they are making you. The gagillion quizzillion things out there competing for your sense of outrage are working to paralyze you when everything you've ever been alive for is at stake... is already ripped away and waiting for you to notice. You're Wile E. Coyote, spinning your wheels, not noticing you're already over this cliff. Either you grab a tuft of grass to pull yourself back up to poke the perps in the nose, or you're already dead.

Sometimes, lately, it feels as though Julian Assange is the only one on Earth who understands this, but there ARE more. They just need to get their courage. They better fucking well hurry up or there's every chance the guy who's put himself on the line for them will be as dead as the others they've killed to keep us down.

Imagine courage.

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love, 99
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reminder

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I love Coleen Rowley.

I linked this at the time, but it bears repeating, and bless Max for reminding me to remind you.

WikiLeaks and 9/11: What if?
Frustrated investigators might have chosen to leak information that their superiors bottled up, perhaps averting the terrorism attacks.
By Coleen Rowley and Bogdan Dzakovic
October 15, 2010

If WikiLeaks had been around in 2001, could the events of 9/11 have been prevented? The idea is worth considering.

The organization has drawn both high praise and searing criticism for its mission of publishing leaked documents without revealing their source, but we suspect the world hasn't yet fully seen its potential. Let us explain.

There were a lot of us in the run-up to Sept. 11 who had seen warning signs that something devastating might be in the planning stages. But we worked for ossified bureaucracies incapable of acting quickly and decisively. Lately, the two of us have been wondering how things might have been different if there had been a quick, confidential way to get information out.

One of us, Coleen Rowley, was a special agent/legal counsel at the FBI's Minneapolis division and worked closely with those who arrested would-be terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui on an immigration violation less than a month before the World Trade Center was destroyed.

Following up on a tip from flight school instructors who had become suspicious of the French Moroccan who claimed to want to fly a jet as an "ego boost," Special Agent Harry Samit and an INS colleague had detained Moussaoui. A foreign intelligence service promptly reported that he had connections with a foreign terrorist group, but FBI officials in Washington inexplicably turned down Samit's request for authority to search Moussaoui's laptop computer and personal effects.

Those same officials stonewalled Samit's supervisor, who pleaded with them in late August 2001 that he was "trying to keep someone from taking a plane and crashing into the World Trade Center." (Yes, he was that explicit.) Later, testifying at Moussaoui's trial, Samit testified that he believed the behavior of his FBI superiors in Washington constituted "criminal negligence."

The 9/11 Commission ultimately concluded that Moussaoui was most likely being primed as a Sept. 11 replacement pilot and that the hijackers probably would have postponed their strike if information about his arrest had been announced.

WikiLeaks might have provided a pressure valve for those agents who were terribly worried about what might happen and frustrated by their superiors' seeming indifference. They were indeed stuck in a perplexing, no-win ethical dilemma as time ticked away. Their bosses issued continual warnings against "talking to the media" and frowned on whistle-blowing, yet the agents felt a strong need to protect the public.

The other one of us writing this piece, Federal Air Marshal Bogdan Dzakovic, once co-led the Federal Aviation Administration's Red Team to probe for vulnerabilities in airport security. He also has a story of how warnings were ignored in the run-up to Sept. 11. In repeated tests of security, his team found weaknesses nine out of 10 times that would make it possible for hijackers to smuggle weapons aboard and seize control of airplanes. But the team's reports were ignored and suppressed, and the team was shut down entirely after 9/11.

In testimony to the 9/11 Commission, Dzakovic summed up his experience this way: "The Red Team was extraordinarily successful in killing large numbers of innocent people in the simulated attacks …[and yet] we were ordered not to write up our reports and not to retest airports where we found particularly egregious vulnerabilities.... Finally, the FAA started providing advance notification of when we would be conducting our 'undercover' tests and what we would be checking."

The commission included none of Dzakovic's testimony in its report.

Looking back, Dzakovic believes that if WikiLeaks had existed at the time, he would have gone to it as a last resort to highlight what he knew were serious vulnerabilities that were being ignored.

The 9/11 Commission concluded, correctly in our opinion, that the failure to share information within and between government agencies — and with the media and the public — led to an overall failure to "connect the dots."

Many government careerists are risk-averse. They avoid making waves and, when calamity strikes, are more concerned with protecting themselves than with figuring out what went wrong and correcting it.

Decisions to speak out inside or outside one's chain of command — let alone to be seen as a whistle-blower or leaker of information — is fraught with ethical and legal questions and can never be undertaken lightly. But there are times when it must be considered. Official channels for whistle-blower protections have long proved illusory. In the past, some government employees have gone to the media, but that can't be done fully anonymously, and it also puts reporters at risk of being sent to jail for refusing to reveal their sources. For all of these reasons, WikiLeaks provides a crucial safety valve.

Coleen Rowley, a FBI special agent for more than 20 years, was legal counsel to the FBI field office in Minneapolis from 1990 to 2003. Bogdan Dzakovic was a special agent for the FAA's security division. He filed a formal whistle-blower disclosure against the FAA for ignoring the vulnerabilities documented by the Red Team. For the past nine years he has been relegated to entry-level staff work for the Transportation Security Administration.

Coleen Rowley is my kind of countryman.

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love, 99
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mirror list now on my blog footer

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I am trying to help make sure you can always get to it if you want it. There are 355 listed right now and maybe thousands to come. I'm staying on this... and would appreciate comments or emails alerting me to updates in the matter of what's up or down with Wikileaks. I'm supposing it's just too much to hope that they can have their regular site back, all their funding sources restored and a damn apology from our criminal government....

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love, 99
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no, he should resign for the filthy mess he's made of this

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He should resign for being a fascist fraud. He should resign for being a war criminal. He should resign for not protecting the Constitution. He should resign if there is even a PARTICLE of decency hiding somewhere in his vicinity.

Obama should resign if approved UN spying: WikiLeaks founder
(AFP) – 54 minutes ago

MADRID — President Barack Obama should resign if it can be shown that he approved spying by US diplomatic figures on UN officials, the founder of WikiLeaks said in an interview published Sunday.

"The whole chain of command who was aware of this order, and approved it, must resign if the US is to be seen to be a credible nation that obeys the rule of law. The order is so serious it may well have been put to the president for approval," Julian Assange told Spanish daily El Pais.

"Obama must answer what he knew about this illegal order and when. If he refuses to answer or there is evidence he approved of these actions, he must resign," he added during an Internet chat interview published online.

WikiLeaks threw US diplomacy into chaos when it started releasing more than 250,000 classified State Department cables on November 28, creating an international firestorm as American diplomats' private assessments of foreign leaders and politics have been publicly aired.

According to one of the documents, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asked for UN personnel's telephones, emails, credit card details and frequent flier numbers.

The United States and other governments said the release of the documents broke their laws.

Assange gave the interview to El Pais on Saturday from an undisclosed location. The 39-year-old Australian is believed to be in Britain, and a report said he could be arrested this week.

WikiLeaks has come under intense pressure to close since it began releasing the trove of US State Department cables.

The site has already been forced to change its domain name and hop-scotch to servers around the globe as successive companies and countries bent to US arguments branding its divulgations over the past week "illegal".

It has also come under repeated cyber-attack, through a tactic known as distributed denial of service (DDoS) in which thousands of computers connect to its servers in a concerted attempt to knock them off-line.

Mirror websites, which replicate WikiLeaks's data, have sprung up on servers in various countries.

Interpol, meanwhile, has issued a "red notice" against Assange alerting all police forces that he is a wanted person in Sweden, which wants to question him "in connection with a number of sexual offenses", charges he denies.

"The organisation is strong. We have a lot of support, however we also have many attacks of different forms. From ongoing mass DDoS attacks to smears and the legal issues," said Assange.

He said WikiLeaks had "dozens" of people who were helping the organisation deal with the cyber-attack and set up the mirror websites "but it takes a lot of time for us to manage the process".

"We are automating that process and will soon have hundreds. If there is a battle between the US military and the preservation of History, we have insured History will win."

Assange said he and others who work for WikiLeaks had received "hundreds" of "specific" death threats from "US military militants".

"That is not unusual, and we have become practiced from past experiences at ignoring such threats from Islamic extremists, African kleptocrats and so on. Recently the situation has changed with these threats now extending to our lawyers and my children," he added.

Assange said he believed the "ripples are just starting to flow throughout the world" from the release of the State Department cables.

"But I believe geopolitics will be separated into pre and post cablegate phases," he said.

Viva WikiLeaks. Viva Assange.

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love, 99
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why don't i think duff's made a retraction?

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WikiLeaks Exposes Israeli Mafia’s Growing Influence
Cable reveals Mafia-government connection — But US media don't care to dig for the story
by Justin Raimondo
December 03, 2010

I love how the pundits are yawning over the latest WikiLeaks revelations: oh, there’s nothing to see here, it’s all so boring, no "smoking gun," so let’s just move right along. These people are just plain lazy: they want "scoops" delivered to their front doors, all neatly packaged and labeled as such. In short, they don’t want to have to do any work, beyond the usual cut-and-paste. Which is why a lot of the really juicy stuff coming out of WikiLeaks continues to elude them.

Take, for example, this excerpt from a cable dated May 15, 2009 — entitled "Israel, A Promised Land for Organized Crime?" — sent by our embassy in Tel Aviv, which deals with the rising influence of Israeli organized crime:

"As recently as March 2009, Zvika Ben Shabat, Yaacov Avitan, and Tzuri Roka requested visas to attend a ‘security-related convention’ in Las Vegas. According to local media reports, all three had involvement with OC. Post asked the applicants to provide police reports for any criminal records in Israel, but without such evidence there is no immediate ineligibility for links to OC. Luckily, all three have so far failed to return for continued adjudication of their applications. Nevertheless, it is fair to assume that many known OC figures hold valid tourist visas to the United States and travel freely."

What are organized crime figures doing showing up at a "security-related convention" in Las Vegas? Well, it seems Mr. Zvika Ben Shabat is the President of "H.A.Sh Security Group," an Israeli company that offers security services worldwide. Indeed, they just signed an agreement to start a joint venture with India’s giant Micro-Technologies, a company which is described as follows:

"Micro Technologies was established by Dr. [P.] Shekhar, who served as the person in charge on behalf of the Indian Government for advancement and development of the technology and software field in India (First Director Software Technology Park in India), and his company deals with the development of technologies and is already active in many markets around the world, amongst which are: Denmark, Brussels, Italy, New York, Japan, Singapore, South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Sri Lanka and more. The company has security technologies for identification and monitoring of cell phones, vehicles, structures, computers, infrastructures and WIFI technologies."

In other words, they specialize in snooping, otherwise known as spying. The first Micro Technologies/H.A. Sh Security Group project is a "command and control center" to be built in Mumbai, India. As for what the H.A.Sh Security Group specializes in, well, take a look at these YouTube videos: here, here, and here, for starters. And get a load of who is the Chairman of H.A.Sh Security: none other than retired Major General Dan Ronen, whose resume appears here:

"2001-2003 – Israel Police: Head of the Operations Division, with the rank of Major General; Coordination of activities of all police units in the operational field; Coordination with the General Security Service and IDF units in the battle against terrorism; 2004-2007 – Israel Police: Commander of Northern Region (the largest of the police regions); Responsible for liaison and coordination vis-à-vis heads of local authorities; Responsible for leading and commanding the overall forces and systems during the second Lebanon War, in missions involving defense of the residents in the northern home front; Areas of Expertise: Combat against terrorism and suicide bombers coordination and operation of emergency and rescue organizations Combat against crime and crime organizations."

Gen. Ronen is listed as the Chairman of H.A.Sh Security Group, with Mr. Ben Shabat, variously described [pdf] as the President, Vice-President, and Director. So why is one of Israel’s former top cops in a business relationship with a known member of the Israeli Mafia?

Enquiring minds want to know!

Ominously, the cable goes on to bemoan the fact that Israeli organized crime figures are no longer automatically prevented from entering the US due to a change in the rules. As the author, someone named Cunningham, notes in an appended comment entitled "OC [Organized Crime] Slipping Through the Consular Cracks":

"Given the growing reach and lethal methods of Israeli OC, blocking the travel of known OC figures to the United States is a matter of great concern to Post. Through collaboration with Israeli and U.S. law enforcement authorities, Post has developed an extensive database and placed lookouts for OC figures and their foot soldiers. Nevertheless, the above visa cases demonstrate the challenges that have arisen since the termination of the Visas Shark in September 2008. Unlike OC groups from the former Soviet Union, Italy, China, and Central America, application of INA 212(a)(3)(A)(ii) against Israeli OC is not specifically authorized per Foreign Affairs Manual 40.31 N5.3. As such, Israelis who are known to work for or belong to OC families are not automatically ineligible for travel to the United States."

"Visas Shark" was apparently a program that effectively excluded organized crime figures from the US, and its termination is noted here: instead, the embassy must go through a complex bureaucratic procedure in order to exclude a suspected organized crime member. First, the consular official must determine that a "reasonable suspicion" exists to identify a visa applicant as a member of an organized crime syndicate, and then the matter goes back to the State Department’s "Office of Legislation, Regulations, and Advisory Assistance," which will then determine if a "reason to believe" the derogatory information on the applicant exists. A whole laundry list of possible "reasons to believe" are listed, including:

"Acknowledgement of membership by the individual, …actively working to further the organization’s aims in a way to suggest close affiliation; Receiving financial support or recognition from the organization; Determination of membership by a competent court; Statement from local or U.S. law enforcement authorities that the individual is a member; Frequent association with other members; Voluntarily displaying symbols of the organization; and participating in the organization’s activities, even if lawful."

Yet it was due to media reports that the author of the cable determined the connection of Messrs Ben Shabat, Avitan, and Roka to organized crime. Is this good enough to have a "reason to believe"? Ask the Office of Legislation, Regulation, and Advisory Assistance — which is what our embassy in Tel Aviv (and, indeed, our embassies all around the world) must do before they can refuse a visa to an applicant on that basis.

Not that the Israeli Mafia has had any problem entering the United States in the past — and making its presence felt. As Fox News’ Carl Cameron reported on December 17, 2001:

"Los Angeles, 1997, a major local, state and federal drug investigating sours. The suspects: Israeli organized crime with operations in New York, Miami, Las Vegas, Canada, Israel and Egypt. The allegations: cocaine and ecstasy trafficking, and sophisticated white-collar credit card and computer fraud.

"The problem: according to classified law enforcement documents obtained by Fox News, the bad guys had the cops’ beepers, cell phones, even home phones under surveillance. Some who did get caught admitted to having hundreds of numbers and using them to avoid arrest.

"This compromised law enforcement communications between LAPD detectives and other assigned law enforcement officers working various aspects of the case. The organization discovered communications between organized crime intelligence division detectives, the FBI and the Secret Service.

"Shock spread from the DEA to the FBI in Washington, and then the CIA. An investigation of the problem, according to law enforcement documents, concluded, ‘The organization has apparent extensive access to database systems to identify pertinent personal and biographical information.’"

Israel’s hi-tech military sector is booming in the midst of a world economic downturn, and the "homeland security" industry is something they’ve jumped into head first, as Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania knows all too well. It was Rendell who hired them to oversee Pennsylvania’s security — until it was revealed they were spying on legal citizens' groups who were protesting the construction of a local power plant. Israeli "security" firms are operating all over the US, as well as abroad, in airports, and government facilities, and if Israeli organized crime is now a factor in that booming industry, then surely that’s a major security concern — or ought to be.

Cameron’s four-part Fox News investigation into Israeli spying in the US seemed to posit a connection between the Israeli government and the Israeli Mafia, and, thanks to WikiLeaks, we can now see the link made visible. The Gen. Ronen-Ben Shabat connection, through the H.A.Sh Security Group, shows Cameron’s reporting was based on more than a mere suspicion. Given the additional information provided by this cable, it is reasonable to believe a corrupted segment of the Israeli military-law enforcement establishment has literally gone into business with Israeli organized crime.

If that isn’t scary — and newsworthy — I don’t know what is. Yet our laid-back pundits, and "journalists" — who want a story delivered on a silver platter — complain that there’s nothing really new to be found in the WikiLeaks cables.

That’s because they aren’t looking.

[Ed Note: I insert currently working links for the ones that have died on Justin here, but no guarantee how long they'll stay happening. So whatever mirror you go to, just append " cable/2009/05/09TELAVIV1098.html " to their Cablegate page address and it should pull up the cable being referenced here.]

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love, 99
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hunnerts of wikileaks mirrors

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Kaaaaazzaaaaaarrrrt!

All my repaired links having gone dead again, from now on I'm just linking to the list of mirrors... and giving whatever identifier I can for the pieces I want you to find.

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MY WISH....

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love, 99
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i've lived through changing my bandage

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It was not as inelegant as when I was bleeding the plumbing scarlet some nights ago, but it was still a fairly shaky proposition. I rock in such an inside out way. Not a trace of infection, and this time I could get all the excess blood off the skin around the horrific wound. All kine Hibiclens and hydrogen peroxide and silver bandage AND fancy antibiotic ointment, the frickin' works, padded and wrapped with gauze and sticky stretchy wrap AND paper tape... listening to BB2's show the while and having to run over to my machine to skip the too excitable numbers... and right in the middle of it all my nose started running water as hard as I was bleeding the other night... ridiculous... but nothing is falling off the shelves, my coffee has been going into my mouth and down my throat... oh... AND DID I MENTION NOT A TRACE OF INFECTION?

I ROCK!

... inside out and with my right big toe wiggling out my left ear. I haven't gone back to check but I think I mangled myself the first night after the WikiLeaks release and have not had the stomach to face this—preferring my finger fall off—until just this very now. Neither have I bathed, not wanting to get the bandage wet, and I can barely stand to sit next to myself... so a spit bath with surgical scrub is next.

I WILL BE FRESH AS A DAISY WHEN THEY COME TO HAUL ME OFF.

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I mean, that bread knife is some kine seriously serrated and so—no shit—so is the whole top of my left index finger. It still makes my insides hop to look at it, but it's flippin' gorgeous right now compared to the carnage the other night. There is a possibility I may live... which, right now, doesn't sound that appetizing, but, hell, maybe I will wake up from this coma in some hospital somewhere and the Age of Aquarius will turn out to have been in full swing all these terrifying years....

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love, 99
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i know i already linked this

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But it bears repeating, and you really should listen to John Pilger as much as you can.

THIS IS SERIOUS STUFF AND WE MUST FIGHT IT.

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HUNNERTS OF WIKILEAKS MIRRORS....

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love, 99
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who'da thunk

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We'd ever see stuff like this?

It felt soooo good to close my PayPal account! You gotta go to the "more" section on your dropdown menu of account options, but you can get there easily enough, AND you can tell them WHY.

WikiLeaks loses major source of revenue
By JUERGEN BAETZ, Associated Press – 2 hrs 3 mins ago

BERLIN — WikiLeaks has lost a major source of revenue after the online payment service provider PayPal cut off its account used to collect donations, saying the website is engaged in illegal activity.

The announcement also came as WikiLeaks is struggling to keep its website accessible after service providers such as Amazon dropped contracts, and governments and hackers continued to hound the organization.

The weekend move by PayPal came as WikiLeaks' release of hundreds of thousands of United States diplomatic cables brought commercial organizations on the Internet that have business ties with the organization under more scrutiny.

WikiLeaks also is under legal pressure in several countries, including the U.S., and a former colleague of founder Julian Assange has said he will launch of a competing platform.

Donating money to WikiLeaks via PayPal was not possible anymore on Saturday, generating an error message saying: "This recipient is currently unable to receive money."

PayPal said in a blog posting that cutting off WikiLeaks' account was prompted by a violation of the service provider's policy, "which states that our payment service cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity."

The short notice was dated Friday, and a spokeswoman for PayPal Germany declined on Saturday to elaborate and referred to the official blog posting.

WikiLeaks confirmed the latest trouble in its Twitter account, saying: "PayPal bans WikiLeaks after U.S. government pressure."

WikiLeaks has embarrassed Washington and foreign leaders by releasing a trove of brutally frank U.S. diplomatic cables.

PayPal, a subsidiary of U.S.-based online marketplace operator EBay Inc., offers online payment services that are one of several ways WikiLeaks collects donations — and until now was probably the most secure and convenient way to support the organization.

The other options listed on WikiLeaks' website are through mail to an Australian post office box, through bank transfers to accounts in Switzerland, Germany or Iceland, as well as through one "credit card processing partner" in Switzerland.

WikiLeaks' PayPal account redirects users to a German foundation which provides the organization with the money. The Wau Holland Foundation, named after a German hacker, confirmed Saturday in a Twitter message that its PayPal account had been taken down because of the "financial support to WikiLeaks."

The foundation's president, Winfried Motzkus, earlier this week was quoted by the local newspaper Neue Westfaelische in his hometown of Bielefeld as saying that Wau Holland has collected euro750,000 ($1 million) for WikiLeaks, covering the organization's expenses.

WikiLeaks' recent releases seem to have been a boon for the foundation, which had previously described itself as the organization's main financial backer.

On its website, the foundation said "the huge and in this form unique amount of donations has caused the delay of issuing contribution receipts" — which allow Germans to deduct donations from their taxes.

Messages left for the foundation and for Motzkus were not immediately answered.

While WikiLeaks vows to make the world a more transparent place, very little is known about its day-to-day functioning. It has no headquarters, few if any paid staff and its finances remain opaque.

Wau Holland's vice president, Hendrik Heye Fulda, last month told the German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung that WikiLeaks operates on a tight annual budget of about $200,000. Fulda could not be reached for comment Saturday.

Meanwhile, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a former WikiLeaks' spokesman, has announced plans to launch a new and more transparent platform on his own, German news magazine Focus reported.

It will provide the technical infrastructure for anonymous postings and allow informants to choose themselves how and by whom to publish the information, Focus quoted Domscheit-Berg as saying. The 32-year-old Domscheit-Berg, who also has used the name Daniel Schmitt, said he will soon publish a book about his time with Assange at the website.

On Friday, WikiLeaks was forced to move from one website to another as governments and hackers hounded the organization, trying to deprive it of a direct line to the public.

EveryDNS, a company based in Manchester, New Hampshire, stopped directing traffic to the website wikileaks.org late Thursday, saying cyber attacks threatened the rest of its network.

But while wikileaks.org remained unreachable Saturday, it has found new homes. Its German website wikileaks.de was reachable Saturday, and so was its Swiss domain.

The Swiss address directs traffic to servers in France, where political pressure quickly mounted with Industry Minister Eric Besson on Friday, saying it was unacceptable to host a site that "violates the secret of diplomatic relations."

The web hosting company OVH confirmed that it had been hosting WikiLeaks since early Thursday, after a client asked for a "dedicated server with ... protection against attacks," adding it was now up to the courts to decide on the legality of hosting the site on French soil.

French newspaper Le Monde — which was among the publications that were granted full access to the diplomatic cables beforehand — said in one of its online articles Saturday it could not provide links to the relevant cables "as a result of the computer attacks WikiLeaks has suffered and the refusal of some Internet hosts and countries to take in the site."

Media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders on Saturday condemned the personal attacks on Assange and "the blocking, cyber-attacks and political pressure" in what it called the first "attempt at the international community level to censor a website dedicated to the principle of transparency."

WikiLeaks has been brought down numerous times this week by what appear to be denial-of-service attacks. In a typical such attack, remote computers commandeered by rogue programs bombard a website with so many data packets that it becomes overwhelmed and unavailable to visitors. Pinpointing the culprits is difficult. The attacks are relatively easy to mount and can be performed by amateurs.

The attacks started Sunday, just before WikiLeaks released the diplomatic cables. To deal with the flood of traffic, WikiLeaks moved to Amazon.com's Web hosting facility.

But Amazon booted WikiLeaks from the site on Wednesday after U.S. congressional staffers started asking the company about its relationship to WikiLeaks.

The U.S. is currently conducting a criminal investigation into WikiLeaks' release of the diplomatic cables.

They make me feel so foolish for all the time I wasted trying to have a life.

You could make cards to put under the tree telling people you donated to WikiLeaks for their Christmas present... spread some real holiday cheer.

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HUNNERTS OF WIKILEAKS MIRRORS....

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love, 99
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viva lula

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I love him.

Brazil recognizes Palestinian state
The Associated Press
Friday, December 3, 2010; 12:15 PM

SAO PAULO — Brazil says it has recognized the state of Palestine based on borders at the time of Israel's 1967 conquest of the West Bank.

The Foreign Ministry says the recognition is in response to a request made by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas last month to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Silva sent a letter to Abbas on Dec. 1, saying Brazil recognizes Palestine and hopes that the recognition will help lead to states of Israel and Palestine "that will coexist peacefully and in security."

The foreign ministry says that the recognition is "in line with Brazil's historic willingness to contribute to peace between Israel and Palestine."

The announcement was posted Friday on the Foreign Ministry's website.

I love him.

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love, 99
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okay, not exactly my cup of tea but on the right track

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I just listened to this podcast, and they actually sound as though they really don't have an agenda. Too goofy for me, but they also put in a lot of good commentary on a range of things. I think I heard them playing a clip of Bill O'Reilly bitching about the FBI setting up Muslim kids for thought crimes. Maybe I was dozing off and it was really one of his interlocutors, but, even so, that's GREAT! Depending on when you click this link I guess, you might be able to think you heard it too.

I think you should give it a whirl. What the heck... it's good to hear new voices... it's the weekend... you can putter while they blather.

[Moment of Truth PDF]

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Extra credit....

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love, 99
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think of the few million links ruined already

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I am really pissed off about all the links killed by this totalitarian server murder action against WikiLeaks. I'm outraged by the calls to harm Julian Assange AND all the shit heads impugning his character. Yes, yes, I know, not everyone has the time to do the amount of research I do and they don't know Julian Assange from Genghis Khan, but that's kind of the POINT behind my ire. The IGNORANCE running even intelligent people is killing us all. Even if it were only killing one it would be satanically ugly, but it's ruining the whole world.

I can't tell you how badly I want to be in the Oval Office this very minute making our Murderating Fuck in Chief's knickknacks clatter and topple and his stupid ears curl up and drop off from the sound of my fury. He could live through that dickless wimp, Emanuel, but he'd stroke out in his effort to appease my wrath by now... just for these millions of important links made worthless by his filthy pusillanimity... not to MENTION the death toll... and if he allows Assange to be harmed, now, on top of everything, when one little sentence out his mouth could have upheld decency... man, oh, man, I'm dying of my urge to tune him up.

I was going to go all through my blog to try to fix all the broken WikiLeaks links, and go rip out all the unfortunately still working Amazon links, but this truly may turn into a veritable apocalypse of chasing servers all over the globe and I have no feeling that so much work would even hold for long. So I've just fixed the links in the last few posts and on the sidebar, backed up the filthy cable that trumpets Clinton's actionable attempts at espionage and fuck Amazon. They aren't getting any more of my business or any more links from me. From here forward, I am resolved to stay as Zen as possible whatever comes, but am girding myself to the sick inevitability of having to chase down the new whereabouts of WikiLeaks every few days. It's a wonder TwitFace hasn't banned them yet. That will probably be next.

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And CLOSE YER PAYPAL ACCOUNT.... Go ahead. It feels great and it will make people online who want yer donations find some DECENT people to handle the transaction.

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Poor guy. I hope this huge hassle ends up saving the world. I've said many times that all it takes is the WILL, that key ingredient that power movers never lack and the rest of us almost universally lack. What it takes is unflagging will. Maybe it's directed bad energy beams sapping us, or maybe we're spoiled rotten fatties, whatever, it takes WILL to change the world.

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Can't we at LEAST agree that gradualism is way so TOTALLY inappropriate?

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HUNNERTS OF WIKILEAKS MIRRORS....

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love, 99
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