Another fantastic video from the Institute for Justice:
Monthly Archives: December 2010
The lawless Wild West attacks WikiLeaks
From Salon:
WikiLeaks has never been charged with a crime, let alone indicted for one or convicted of one. A consensus of legal experts agree that prosecuting the organization or Julian Assange for any of its leaks would be difficult in the extreme. Despite those facts, look at just some of the punishment that has been doled out to them and what has been threatened:
[There is a better list on Salon, with links and pics.]
-Paypal freezes WikiLeaks Account
-Australia cancels Assange’s passport
-Swiss bank freezes WikiLeaks founder’s legal defense fund
-Amazon cuts off WikiLeaks
-Seattle-based software company, Tableau removed charts links to by Wikileaks in response to Sen. Joe Lieberman’s statement.
– former Canada adviser claims Julian Assange should be assassinated
– WikiLeaks should be designated a ‘foreign terrorist organization,’ Rep. Peter King fumes
Just look at what the U.S. Government and its friends are willing to do and capable of doing to someone who challenges or defies them — all without any charges being filed or a shred of legal authority. They’ve blocked access to their assets, tried to remove them from the Internet, bullied most everyone out of doing any business with them, froze the funds marked for Assange’s legal defense at exactly the time that they prepare a strange international arrest warrant to be executed, repeatedly threatened him with murder, had their Australian vassals openly threaten to revoke his passport, and declared them “Terrorists” even though — unlike the authorities who are doing all of these things — neither Assange nor WikiLeaks ever engaged in violence, advocated violence, or caused the slaughter of civilians.
This is all grounded in the toxic mindset expressed yesterday on Meet the Press (without challenge, naturally) by GOP Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who said of Assange: “I think the man is a high-tech terrorist. He’s done an enormous damage to our country, and I think he needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. And if that becomes a problem, we need to change the law.” As usual, when wielded by American authorities, the term “terrorist” means nothing more than: “those who impede or defy the will of the U.S. Government with any degree of efficacy.” Anyone who does that is, by definition, a Terrorist. And note McConnell’s typical, highly representative view that if someone he wants to punish isn’t a criminal under the law, then you just “change the law” to make him one.
But that sort of legal scheming isn’t even necessary. The U.S. and its “friends” in the Western and business worlds are more than able and happy to severely punish anyone they want without the slightest basis in “law.” That’s what the lawless, Wild Western World is: political leaders punishing whomever they want without any limits, certainly without regard to bothersome concepts of “law.”
. . . .
People often have a hard time believing that the terms “authoritarian” and “tyranny” apply to their own government, but that’s because those who meekly stay in line and remain unthreatening are never targeted by such forces. The face of authoritarianism and tyranny reveals itself with how it responds to those who meaningfully dissent from and effectively challenge its authority: do they act within the law or solely through the use of unconstrained force?
. . . .
Yahoo News!’ Michael Calderone has a very good article documenting how major American media outlets — as always — snapped into line with the authorities they serve by ceasing to use the term “whistle-blower” to describe WikiLeaks. (Read more from salon.com)
Bloomberg’s Organ Snatchers
New York City may soon be a very dangerous place to die — and not only because of high estate taxes.
If Mayor Mike Bloomberg has his way, anyone suffering a heart attack will get responses from Emergency Medical Technicians…and special organ donation teams ready and waiting to take your organs should you conveniently not survive.
Equally barbaric and depravingly insensitive — nearly criminally indifferent — is the proposal to have doctors ready to swoop in on the deceased’s loved ones within minutes to ask for the organs.
And there’s little difference in practical terms between the government letting you die and pressuring your relatives to give you the organs, and a private third party brokering a sale of organs like one rabbi in New Jersey whose commerce in kidneys got him indicted by federal prosecutors who consider selling organs to be a federal crime. (Please – no New Jersey jokes — at least in New Jersey the organ brokers are candid enough to sell kidneys and do not pretend to be doing a public good.)
Such insensitivity was more the hallmark of truly barbaric cultures like the Aztecs, who would play sports involving kicking around the head of a vanquished opponent. This proposal shames those of us who treasure our commitment to human life — and to fundamental equality under both the eyes of a Supreme Being, and the Fourteenth Amendment. So much for America as an advanced nation.
All of this is under the guise of “helping” people…and if you are in cardiac distress you would be providing the help the most!
This dangerous proposal puts ordinary suffering City residents at the peril of having to trust that their paramedic is there to save them, not to go shopping for organs for a friend or family member. No regulation can prevent a paramedic from making his own warped triage assessment of you — oh, this one will die anyway, let’s see if his pancreas works because Uncle George has pancreatic cancer and needs a transplant.
The simple saying used by investigators and prosecutors — “motive and opportunity” — is also true here. Self-proclaimed saviors will have both the motive and opportunity to let you die in order to give your organs to someone else they prefer.
This warped and dangerous mentality was on display earlier this year, when New York State Assemblyman Richard Brodsky (who ran unsuccessfully for Attorney General) proposed an “opt-out” requirement for New York drivers, who under his proposal would become subject to automatic organ harvesting upon death unless they opted out by checking off a box on their driver’s license. Thankfully, Brodsky’s bill languishes in Albany. (Read more from ericdixonlaw.com)
CIA kidnaps, tortures German citizen, tries to keep him prisoner they discover he’s innocent
I hate the James Bond image of the CIA. I think any violent organization with the power to conceal its mistakes will be reckless, barbaric, and grossly incompetent.
Despite El-Masri’s protests that he was not al-Masri, he was beaten, stripped naked, shot full of drugs, given an enema and a diaper, and flown first to Baghdad and then to the notorious “salt pit,” the CIA’s secret interrogation facility in Afghanistan. At the salt pit, he was repeatedly beaten, drugged, and subjected to a strange food regime that he supposed was part of an experiment that his captors were performing on him. Throughout this time, El-Masri insisted that he had been falsely imprisoned, and the CIA slowly established that he was who he claimed to be. Over many further weeks of bickering over what to do, a number of CIA figures apparently argued that, though innocent, the best course was to continue to hold him incommunicado because he “knew too much.” Dana Priest furnished the core of this account in an excellent 2005 Washington Post story. Other aspects have been slowly confirmed by German criminal investigators. By studying El-Masri’s hair and skin samples, for instance, they were able to confirm allegations that he was drugged and subjected to a bizarre starvation regimen. Throughout this process, El-Masri’s account of what transpired, part of which he wrote up as an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, has consistently been vindicated. (Read more from harpers.org)
In Quest for ‘Legal High,’ Chemists Outfox Law
ANTWERP, Belgium—When the housing market crashed in 2008, David Llewellyn’s construction business went with it. Casting around for a new gig, he decided to commercialize something he’d long done as a hobby: making drugs.
But the 49-year-old Scotsman didn’t go into the illegal drug trade. Instead, he entered the so-called “legal high” business—a burgeoning industry producing new psychoactive powders and pills that are marketed as “not for human consumption.”
Mr. Llewellyn, a self-described former crack addict, started out making mephedrone, a stimulant also known as Meow Meow that was already popular with the European clubbing set. Once governments began banning it earlier this year, Mr. Llewellyn and a chemistry-savvy partner started selling something they dubbed Nopaine—a stimulant they concocted by tweaking the molecular structure of the attention-deficit drug Ritalin. (Read more from online.wsj.com)
According to my friend, esoteridactyl, this wouldn’t fly in the U.S. because substances are banned based on their effect, instead of on their chemical composition.
Argentina recognizes Palestine
Argentina has recognised Palestine as a “free and independent state,” just days after neighbouring Brazil announced that it would “legitimate aspiration of the Palestinian people for a secure, united, democratic and economically viable state co-existing peacefully with Israel”.
Hector Timerman, Argentina’s foreign minister, said on Monday that the Latin American nation officially recognised Palestine according to its 1967 borders and hopes for peaceful solution to Palestinian-Israeli conflict. (Read more from english.aljazeera.net)
Wikileaks Fallout Continues
Joe Lieberman emulates Chinese dictators
Talking Points Memo — in an article headlined: “How Lieberman Got Amazon To Drop Wikileaks” — detailed that Lieberman’s “staffers . . . called Amazon to ask about it, and left questions with a press secretary including, ‘Are there plans to take the site down?'” Shortly thereafter, “Amazon called them back . . . to say they had kicked Wikileaks off.” Lieberman’s spokeswoman said: “Sen. Lieberman hopes that the Amazon case will send the message to other companies that might host Wikileaks that it would be irresponsible to host the site.” (Read more from salon.com)
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Wikileaks skepticism:
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Lots of categorized information on wikipedia.
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hundreds of mirrors of WikiLeaks
“Even if you take down the server in Sweden, it’s too late,” Swiss Pirate Party Vice President Pascal Gloor told The Associated Press on Sunday.
“There are hundreds of mirrors of WikiLeaks now,” he said. “It’s a test for Internet censorship. Can governments take something off the net? I think not. There are copies of the website everywhere.”
In a high-tech media building in Bienne, Switzerland, the party convened an impromptu news conference late Friday to say it had no special knowledge of Assange’s whereabouts or ability to contact him, but had spoken with him weeks ago to help seek asylum in Switzerland. That was during Assange’s visit to Geneva last month when he spoke to reporters at the United Nations. (Read more from commondreams.org)
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Wikileaks cables reveal that the US wrote Spain’s proposed copyright law
Spain’s Congress is about to vote on a new and extremely harsh copyright/Internet law. It’s an open secret that the law was essentially drafted by American industry groups working with the US trade representative.
But it gets gets more interesting: 115 of the Wikileaks cables intercepted from the US embassy in Madrid were tagged with “KIPR” — that is, relating to “intellectual property,” The big question has been: will El Pais, the Spanish newspaper that has the complete trove of Wikileaks cables, release them in time to affect the vote on the new law?
Well, now they’ve started. The first 35 of the 115 cables have been released, and they confirm the widespread suspicion: the Spanish government and the opposition party were led around by the nose by the US representatives who are the real legislative authority in Spain. (Read more from boingboing.net)
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US Spying on UN Personnel
Assange told El Pais, “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.”
Assange has also called on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to resign her post.
The State Department directive sent in July 2009 asked diplomats to collect basic contact information about U.N. officials, including Internet passwords, credit card numbers and frequent flyer numbers.
WikiLeaks documents reveal that the CIA was behind the State Department’s directive to gather information on U.N. officials. (Read more from cbsnews.com)
U.S.S.A. Internet Warning
US Government Censors 70 Websites
The US is really ramping up its war on intellectual property infringement, a war which I’m sure will be just as successful, cheap and supported by the people as the wars on drugs and terrorism. The US has started seizing the domain names of various websites through ICANN – not because owners of these sites were convicted of anything, but merely because complaints have been filed against them. Anyone want to take a guess how long it will be before the US government blocks WikiLeaks? Update: The blocks function outside of the US too. In other words, the US is forcing its views upon the rest of the world once again.
The current seizures of domains did not even use the proposed bill which recently passed the US Senate Judiciary Committee. The seizures come from the US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, and cover about 70 websites relating to potential copyright infringement and counterfeit goods, among which is Torrent-Finder.com, a mere torrent search engine which does not host or even link to torrents; it displays content hosted elsewhere through embedded iframes.
“My domain has been seized without any previous complaint or notice from any court!” the owner of Torrent-Finder explained TorrentFreak, “I firstly had DNS downtime. While I was contacting GoDaddy I noticed the DNS had changed. Godaddy had no idea what was going on and until now they do not understand the situation and they say it was totally from ICANN.”
This is equivalent to having your house seized for pointing out to someone you can buy weed in the college district. (Read more from osnews.com)
On Voting
Personally, I’m still torn between Hoppe’s view of Democracy, the argument that we should simply turn our backs on government to the best of our ability, and my desire to support Ron Paul.
Ambivalence aside, I love Stefan Molyneux’s rant:
Here are his thoughts on Ron Paul. His argument is analogous to the Hoppian anarcho-capitalist argument that a minimal state is impossible.
Why is Greenland so rich these days? It said goodbye to the EU
If you think that leaving the EU would be catastrophic, take a look at Greenland. By rights its people ought to be poor. Their island is isolated, suffers from freezing weather, has a workforce of only 28,000 and relies on fish for 82 per cent of its exports. But it turns out that since leaving the EU, Greenland has been so freed of EU red tape and of the destruction of the Common Fisheries Policy, that the average income of the islanders today is higher than those living in Britain, Germany and France.
Greenland’s politicians realised that the fisheries policy was ruining their fishing industry. They had the guts to stand up against the all the prophets of doom and let their people vote in a referendum on leaving the European Community, as the EU was then called. On January 1, 1985, it became independent of Brussels – the only country ever to do so.
Greenland was, with Britain, one of only two EU countries to be heavily dependent on fishing. In fact, Britain had, in some estimates, 80 per cent of Europe’s fish stocks when it entered the EU, because our fishermen had carefully managed them, while the fisherman of Spain, France and Italy had destroyed most of the Mediterranean stocks.
The surprising thing is that while the unemployment from closing (loss-making) coal mines is frequently denounced by Labour politicians, more British workers lost their jobs as a result of gigantic French and Spanish boats being permitted to raid our stocks. (Read more from blogs.telegraph.co.uk)
Brazil recognizes Palestinian state
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. (Read more from washingtonpost.com)
Here is a map of the world by which nations recognize Palestine.
What’s wrong with the scared, unreasonable, unscientific, uninformed, inattentive, stupid, mean, cowardly, racist American people?
What’s wrong with the American people?
Obama — Scared, Unreasonable, Unscientific. “Part of the reason that our politics seem so tough right now, and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time, is because we’re hard-wired not to always think clearly when we’re scared.”
Senator Kerry — Uninformed. Inattentive.
Bill Maher — Too stupid to be governed.
First Lady Obama — Downright Mean.
Attorney General Eric Holder — “a nation of cowards.”
NY Times editorial writers on opposition to Obamacare — “racist”
Ron Paul’s analysis of the Midterm Election
Jump to 4:00 to get into the more interesting part of the discussion.
@ 4:45 — “It’s always a good day when politicians get fired, and it’s even better when they get fired for the right reasons.”
:D :D
@ 5:20 — Washington’s definition of “compromise.”
@ 6:00 — Lots of anti-liberty results in local propositions.
@ 7:25 — Ron Paul speaks about Congressman elect Justin Amash from Michigan.
@ 9:15 — “This is not a victory for the Republican Party, this is a wake up call.”
(I’m a little less optimistic, but it’s nice to see a small step in the right direction.)
Cut, Cut, Cut the Budget… Just Don’t Touch Israel
Politico‘s Laura Rozen reports, via the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, that House Republican whip Eric Cantor “would propose separating U.S. aid to Israel from the foreign operations budget, which the GOP may vote to defund”:
Cantor, of Virginia, said he wants to protect funding for Israel should that situation arise.
“Part of the dilemma is that Israel has been put in the overall foreign aid looping,” he said when asked about the increasing tendency of Republicans in recent years to vote against foreign operations appropriations. “I’m hoping we can see some kind of separation in terms of tax dollars going to Israel.”
Cantor’s statement was a sign that the Republican leadership was ready to defer to the party’s right wing on this matter. Some on the GOP right have suggested including Israel aid in the defense budget, and a number of Tea Party-backed candidates have said they would vote against what is known in Congress as “foreign ops.”