So I sing a song of love for Julian

PayPal Cuts WikiLeaks from Money Flow [They didn't just cut the account, they confiscated the money. Fuck PayPal/eBay.]

Calls from Joe Lieberman help force Amazon and EveryDNS to dump Wikileaks [Fuck Amazon/EveryDNS & Joe LIEberman.
My cyber shopping list is getting shorter by the minute.]

Swiss bank freezes WikiLeaks founder's legal defense fund [Oh sure, they'll help American scofflaws evade taxes, and help Nazi's confiscate Jews' money, but here they draw the line.]

Federal employees warned away from Wikileaks

Students warned: Read WikiLeaks and you're out of a government job [And it's the Universities that are telling them this. In the latest new, the US also claims to have a method of removing pee from a swimming pool.]

Assange an ‘enemy combatant’ but fault is Obama’s [sez newt Gingrich, that moral paragon.]

"Why was [Assange] not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders?" - Sarah Falin [Umm, where IS OBL?]

GOP leader Mitch McConnell calls WikiLeaks founder ‘a high-tech terrorist’ [Really!? He doesn't scare me as much as you folks do.]

Julian Assange's lawyers say they are being watched WikiLeaks founder's lawyers also accuse US state department of inappropriate behaviour in not respecting attorney-client protocol [This isn't news, the Feds have been listening in on bedrooms, lawyers and clients, cell phones and all other communications for years, with out any warrants. And that's just the U.S.]

WIKILEAKS founder Julian Assange says militant supporters of the US military have made death threats against his family in Australia.

Assange threatens to release ‘poison pill’ if arrested or killed [Can you blame him?]

Folks, what we're seeing here is the first shot heard 'round the world of a cyber-war. Black hats and white hats, (I spend way too much time doing cyber-security), are targeting a man and his family.

It's not that simple. You can't stop Al Keda [sic] by killing Osama Bin Ladin. You can't stop WikiLeaks by killing Julian Assange. I've mirrored the site, I've downloaded the insurance file and uploaded it to other sites. I have multiple copies on media. And I'm not the only one.

What you can do is ensure everyone on the globe gets an even break AKA freedom. No starving, no imprisonment without a fair trial, (no inhumane conditions even then), health care for all.

This is the exact opposite from libertarians; they think they're special and they should get to do what ever they want. But since they rode the short bus to school, and philosophy, and economics, I'm just going to ignore them as a parent does to a child having a tantrum.

It's easy if you try.

Now for my musical selections:

The "secret service" makes me nervous, those White House "dicks" get all their kicks when they observe us!

Librarian and former reporter Carol Kreck is shown in the above video being ticketed and then removed by police during a McCain rally in Denver earlier this week.

In the video, a representative from the Denver Center for Performing Arts claims it was "representatives of the Secret Service" who asked for her removal. But it seems that isn't true:

It was Sen. John McCain's staff who asked security at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts to remove people holding protest signs at the venue — not U.S. Secret Service agents, who were not involved in Carol Kreck's ouster from the galleria.

A video of the incident circulating widely on the Internet shows a DCPA security guard saying that he was told by the Secret Service to remove Kreck, who was holding a paper sign that said "McCain = Bush."

But Thursday, after two days of being vilified by bloggers, letter writers and others, the Secret Service emphatically denied involvement.

. . .

"A representative of Senator John McCain's staff respectfully asked that the venue for its July 7 Town Hall Meeting, The Denver Center for the Performing Arts, not allow persons to display signage within the Arts Complex," DCPA officials said in a statement.

DCPA spokeswoman Suzanne Blandon said the guard who told Kreck to leave was "simply mistaken" in identifying the Secret Service as the agency that wanted her to leave. Blandon said the guard did not intend to use the Secret Service as leverage and did not mean to mislead anyone.

Maybe yes, maybe no. Ms. Kreck has a piece up at HuffPost where she adds:

Because it is without attribution, the lede in Cardona's story reads like she took the word of the DCPA and the Secret Service for gospel, which might not have been such a good idea.

Where is the statement from McCain's staff in this story? And why did it take the Secret Service two days to claim they had nothing to do with my ouster?

. . . The Secret Service claims what happened in the courtyard would be "inconsistent with our established policies and procedures." But the Secret Service has been hit several times with lawsuits alleging violations of First Amendment rights when citizens expressed opposition to administration policies. Locally, Denver attorney David Lane is suing them for a violation of Steven Howards' First and Fourth Amendment rights. Howards approached Dick Cheney in a Beaver Creek mall and told the vice president his policies in the Middle East were reprehensible. He was arrested; charges were dropped.

(As the New York Times reported, that issue devolved into "Secret Service agents -- under oath in court depositions -- accusing one another of unethical and perhaps even illegal conduct in the handling of Mr. Howards's arrest and the official accounting of it.")

Many of you have been inquiring about the status of legal proceedings. Colorado ACLU has deputized two attorneys to handle my case: criminal defense lawyer Pete Hedeen will take care of the trespassing charge. I will not pay a fine, I will not accept diversion. That leaves two options: dropped charges, or going to trial. After that is resolved, David Lane will proceed civilly.

Indeed. No word from the McCain campaign. Of course, that would only add to the week's blunders. And no word from the Secret Service who as a rule do not comment on stuff. Except when they do for their own PR purposes.

The Pall on the Mall that is America

Police Arrest Anti-War Protester, 80, At Mall

An 80-year-old church deacon was removed from the Smith Haven Mall yesterday in a wheelchair and arrested by police for refusing to remove a T-shirt protesting the Iraq War.

Police said that Don Zirkel, of Bethpage, was disturbing shoppers at the Lake Grove mall with his T-shirt, which had what they described as “graphic anti-war images.”
[...]
Zirkel was charged with criminal trespassing and resisting arrest. He was released on bail. A spokeswoman for mall owner Simon Property Group did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

Generally speaking, a mall has the right to control what happens on its property, said John McEntee, a Uniondale commercial litigation lawyer.

Gee, would that be this John McEntee!? Well there's a lawyer who never met a corporation he didn't suck hind tit on!

Why wouldn't the reporters do just a tiny bit of research [Note to Anastasia Economides & Matthew Chayes, it's called 'Google!'] and find how many Federal and state judges have disagreed with McEntee?

Maybe it's legally true in New York that cops can yank an 80 year old Catholic Deacon out of his seat in the mall and arrest him for wearing a t-shirt, maybe it's not.

Is it too much to ask that reporters do the same research as a profession that I can do as a citizen?

Seriously folks, they get paid for this? I get paid to do medical research, but on my own time I spent 20 minutes on Google, 2 phone calls, and have a more balanced piece.

Even if it is legal, it's even more legal to boycott and/or complain to the Simon Group who owns these bastions of non-free speech:
Simon Property Group, Inc.
225 West Washington Street
Indianapolis, Indiana 46204
(317) 636-1600



Cross posted at VidiotSpeak

I Think ICANN, I Think ICANN

Perhaps you remember when a Fed judge shutdown a whole foreign owned website because a Swiss bank laundering money in the Cayman Islands objected to it. Well at least that company had to go thru a judicial process, no matter how flawed it was.

Guess what, Bushco can shut down a foreign owned, foreign served website without judicial review, without little explanation or recourse:

A Wave of the Watch List, and Speech Disappears

Steve Marshall is an English travel agent. He lives in Spain, and he sells trips to Europeans who want to go to sunny places, including Cuba. In October, about 80 of his Web sites stopped working, thanks to the United States government.
[...]
It turned out, though, that Mr. Marshall’s Web sites had been put on a Treasury Department blacklist and, as a consequence, his American domain name registrar, eNom Inc., had disabled them. [...] there is no dispute that eNom shut down Mr. Marshall’s sites without notifying him and has refused to release the domain names to him. In effect, Mr. Marshall said, eNom has taken his property and interfered with his business.
[...]
Mr. Marshall said he did not understand “how Web sites owned by a British national operating via a Spanish travel agency can be affected by U.S. law.” Worse, he said, “these days not even a judge is required for the U.S. government to censor online materials.”

But wait! There's more!

Of course, eNom has an agreement with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (”ICANN”) where eNom agrees to abide by ICANN’s “Policy on Transfer of Registrations between Registrars.” That policy sets forth the only circumstances under which a domain registrar may refuse to transfer a domain name to another registrar, such as a court order or evidence of fraud. The policy does not permit withholding that transfer based on a claim that the domain names are blocked property under OFAC’s regulations.

In such cases Marshall would be entitled to avail himself of ICANN’s “Registrar Transfer Dispute Resolution Policy” to obtain an arbitral order requiring eNom to transfer the domain name and, if eNom still refused to do so, ICANN could terminate eNom’s status as a domain name registry. But here’s the rub: ICANN either can’t or won’t do that because it is a California non-profit corporation and is itself subject to the Cuba sanctions.

This, of course, resurrects the dispute that the rest of the world had in allowing the U.S. so much control over the Internet name-assignment process in the first place.

Cross posted at VidiotSpeak

1, 2, 3, 4 ... What the hell are we fighting for?

Anti-war Vets Slam Parade Ban

LONG BEACH - Iraq veteran Jason Lemieux might not be marching in the 11th annual Long Beach Veterans Day Parade on Saturday.

The Marine, who served three tours of duty in Iraq and is now against the war, was hoping to march as a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, a national organization that calls for immediate withdrawal of troops in Iraq.

The group’s application, however, was rejected last month because of its political views, parade coordinators said.

“I wanted to march like the rest of the Iraq veterans,” said Lemieux, a 24-year-old Anaheim resident. “I served my country. I’m a veteran of a foreign war. I think I deserve that respect.”

Iraq Veterans, along with the groups Veterans for Peace and Military Families Speak Out, applied to march together in the parade this year under the entry “Military Patriots.”

After reviewing each group’s mission statement, the Veterans Day Parade Committee, a non-profit group that organizes the event, voted unanimously to reject the application, said parade coordinator Martha Thuente.

“They do not fit the spirit of the parade,” she said. “The spirit being one of gratitude for what the veterans have done. We do not want groups of a political nature, advocating the troops’ withdrawal from Iraq.”

Oh, the irony! What better way to show gratitude for what veterans have done than to bring them home from an illegal war!?

But wait, there's more!

City Attorney Bob Shannon on Wednesday said the parade committee is a private, non-profit organization, and therefore reserves the right to choose its participants.
[...]
Each year, the parade generates funds through community fundraisers and corporate sponsors, Thuente said. Paramount Petroleum Corporation donated $10,000 this year.

Yet another example of this war being about the oil.

And BTW, the $hitty Attorney is being duplicitous:

The city provides the staffing, flags, banners, utilities and police protection, Shannon said, but does not play any role in the approval of parade participants.

“The fact that the city does provide staff is a disconnect,” Shannon said.

So taxpayers provide the streets, the staffing, the flags, the banners, the utilities and the police ... but it's a private event. Yeah, Bob, there's a disconnect ... between you and reality.

I'll give the last word to Iraq veteran Jason Lemieux:

“It feels like I’ve been betrayed by the very people I fought to serve,” he said.

Cross posted at VidiotSpeak

Umm, about those 'freedoms' we're fighting for?

I'm pretty sure one of them used to be Freedom of the Press:

U.S. Confiscates AP Footage At Scene of Bloody Baghdad Bombing

BAGHDAD A daring ambush of bombs and gunfire left Poland's ambassador pinned down in a burning vehicle Wednesday before being pulled to safety and airlifted in a rescue mission by the embattled security firm Blackwater USA. At least three people were killed, including a Polish bodyguard.

American authorities confiscated an AP Television News videotape that contained scenes of the wounded being evacuated. U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Scott Bleichwehl told AP that Iraqi law make it illegal to photograph or videotape the aftermath of bombings or other attacks.

Yet another example of how Bush has brought peace and democracy to the Middle East.

The US has a very selective way of upholding Iraqi law.

Cross posted at VidiotSpeak

They Hate Us For Our Freedoms

Freedoms like the Pentagon censoring material they've already released:

The Pentagon has released a censored audiotape of suspected Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — deleting a part officials said could be used to recruit future terrorists.
[...]
The public may read that statement in a 26-page transcript previously released by the Defense Department

Apparently they are counting on a lot of 'childern' being left behind since they don't mind you reading it but it's classified if you hear it.

Freedoms like the Dean of a California law school being fired a couple of days after he'd been hired. Rethuglican politicians and the California Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald M. George got him fired.

A conservative Los Angeles County politician asked about two dozen people in an e-mail last month how to prevent the University of California, Irvine from hiring renowned liberal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky as its founding law school dean, a spokesman for the politician said Friday.

Making Chemerinsky the head of the law school "would be like appointing al-Qaida in charge of homeland security," Michael Antonovich, a longtime Republican member of the county Board of Supervisors, said in a voicemail left with The Associated Press.

WTF is wrong with rethuglicans!? [/rhetorical question] They screech about a MoveOn.org ad telling the truth about Petraeus' "cooking the books," but they see nothing wrong with comparing one of the most respected constitutional scholars in the country to al-Qaida.

And it wasn't just a rethuglican politician that complained, California Chief Justice Ronald M. George also whined about Chermerinsky's appointment in an L.A. Times op-ed. One would think that Chief Justices would be above this type of swiftboating. One would be wrong.

And Chancellor's Drake defense?

Chemerinsky didn't lose the dean's position because of his politics, saying that it was only because he expressed himself in a polarizing way.

Any deal would therefore require Chemerinsky to "successfully transition from being a very outspoken advocate on many causes to being a dean of the stature that we expect in a start-up law school," said Malcom, a prominent Orange County Republican who was going to be a member of Chemerinsky's advisory board.

Get that? He can get his job back as long as he gives up his freedom of speech. Sounds a bit much to expect from a lawyer, constitutional scholar and American citizen. Any American citizen.

Freedoms like the Reverend Lennox Yearwood being assaulted by Capitol police for the crime of, gasp!, trying to attend Petraeus' lying testifying before Congress.
Here's an interview about the incident with the good Reverend

I will be on crutches on Saturday. I’ll be on crutches for quite some time, unfortunately, for what was done to me. I might have been beaten in the halls of Congress, but my spirit wasn't beaten.

Cross posted at VidiotSpeak

Can You Guess My Name?

(via Crooks & Liars)

Mention the President, Lose a Case?
Defense motion to ban George W. Bush's name at trial defeated

Apparently President George W. Bush is now so unpopular that some lawyers believe the mere mention of his name in front of a jury could tip the scales against them.

Attorneys Michael P. Laffey and Robert P. DiDomenicis of Holsten & Associates in Media, Pa., are defending Upper Darby Township, Pa., in a civil rights suit brought by Harold Lischner, an 82-year-old doctor who claims he was falsely arrested for displaying an anti-war sign at a Bush campaign event in September 2003.

With the case set to go to trial on July 23, the defense lawyers recently filed a flurry of motions, including one that asked Eastern District of Pennsylvania Judge Gene E.K. Pratter to prohibit the plaintiff from mentioning Bush's name.

The motion in Lischner v. Upper Darby Township said that according to the latest Newsweek poll, Bush has "the worst approval rating of an American president in a generation," and that 62 percent of Americans believe that Bush's handling of the war in Iraq shows that he is "stubborn and unwilling to admit his mistakes."
[...]
In separate motions, the defense team urged Pratter to prohibit any mention of the First Amendment -- since Lischner's suit is premised only on the Fourth Amendment -- and to bar any testimony about the message on Lischner's protest sign.
[...]
Pratter found that the message on Lischner's sign and Bush's identity, as well as the circumstances surrounding his visit -- including the war in Iraq and Bush's bid for re-election -- are "relevant to the determination of probable cause and to the adequacy of Upper Darby's training and policies."

All relevant evidence is "generally admissible," Pratter said, and "the president's identity and Dr. Lischner's opposition to the war in Iraq -- presumably as evidenced by the text on his sign -- are relevant because they are part of the circumstances weighing on the probable cause analysis conducted by Officer [Michael] Kehrle."
[...]
In a previous ruling, Pratter refused to dismiss the suit, finding that the conditions imposed by Drexelbrook were illegal and that a jury must decide "whether Upper Darby had a policy, practice or custom of enforcing the landowner's unlawful condition."

Also to be decided by the jury, Pratter said, is "whether Upper Darby failed to adequately train its police officers and such failure to train caused Dr. Lischner's constitutional injury."

Now Pratter has ruled that, at trial, Bush's identity has legal significance because it bears directly on the legality of Upper Darby's policies.

"The facts that the political candidate was not only a candidate for arguably the most important office in our government, but also the current president participating in a campaign for re-election, were important to the court's determination that the condition imposed by Drexelbrook was illegal and, thus, relevant to the probable cause determination."

The text of Lischner's sign is also legally significant, Pratter found, because "the fact that Dr. Lischner's sign was not blatantly offensive or disrespectful, and certainly not aimed at inciting violence or some other physical disruption, is relevant to whether probable cause existed."

As a result, Pratter rejected Upper Darby's argument that the "probative value" of Bush's identity and the text of Lischner's sign is outweighed by the danger of "unfair prejudice."

Cross posted at VidiotSpeak

We Can Be Heroes

Candid storm chief gets a lashing

The new director of the National Hurricane Center, an outspoken critic of his superiors since he took over in January, charged Friday night that they are trying to muzzle him and could be setting him up for termination.

Bill Proenza said the acting director of the National Weather Service, Mary Glackin, visited his office in West Miami-Dade Friday and handed him a three-page letter of reprimand.

''I don't think they can pull the rug out from under me right now,'' Proenza said, "but there is no question they are trying to muzzle me.''

In recent interviews with The Miami Herald and other media, Proenza has strongly criticized leaders of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for spending millions of dollars on a public-relations campaign while hurricane forecasters deal with budget shortfalls.

One of his main concerns has been the imminent demise of a key weather satellite called QuikScat, launched in 1999 and long past its designed lifetime.

No replacement currently is in development and the loss of QuikScat could diminish the accuracy of some hurricane forecasts by up to 16 percent, Proenza and other experts have said.

Glackin's letter, obtained by The Miami Herald, charges that Proenza made statements that "may have caused some unnecessary confusion about NOAA's ability to accurately predict tropical storms.''

In the letter, Glackin also told Proenza that his actions had been "requiring me to spend a disproportionate amount of time to correct any confusion; causing undue concern and misunderstanding among your staff; and taking valuable time away from your public role . . .''[ED: That's bovine excrement, if you lose the one aging satellite that can help predict ever increasing hurricanes, that causes confusion.]

Several forecasters and other staffers at the hurricane center have told The Miami Herald that they fully support Proenza, and his comments have earned compliments from many emergency managers and others.
[...]
It was not the first time he has been disciplined since taking over the center.

Proenza said that on April 13, he was told by Louis Uccellini, a high-ranking weather service official: "You better stop these QuikScat [and other] complaints. I'm warning you. You have NOAA, DOC [the U.S. Department of Commerce] and the White House pissed off.''

Asked about his next move, Proenza said Friday night: "I'm not going to be silenced. I know my responsibilities and I know what I have to do.''

This is pure Bushco at it's heart. If you tell the truth, you get punished. If you lie for them you get promoted. (e.g. General Pace v. General Petraeus.)

Here's a sample of how much the QuikScat satellite has meant to Earth's inhabitants.

(h/t to MC for sending the link.)

(Cross posted at Vidiotspeak)

Curses Foiled Again!

Court Rebuffs F.C.C. on Fines for Indecency

If President Bush and Vice President Cheney can blurt out vulgar language, then the government cannot punish broadcast television stations for broadcasting the same words in similarly fleeting contexts.
[...]
Under President Bush, the F.C.C. has expanded its indecency rules, taking a much harder line on obscenities uttered on broadcast television and radio. While the judges sent the case back to the commission to rewrite its indecency policy, it said that it was "doubtful" that the agency would be able to "adequately respond to the constitutional and statutory challenges raised by the networks."
[...]
Mr. Martin, the chairman of the commission, attacked the panel's reasoning [...] "Hollywood will be able to say anything they want, whenever they want."
[...]
But the judges said vulgar words are just as often used out of frustration or excitement, and not to convey any broader obscene meaning. "In recent times even the top leaders of our government have used variants of these expletives in a manner that no reasonable person would believe referenced sexual or excretory organs or activities."
[...]
Mr. Bush was caught on videotape last July using a common vulgarity that the commission finds objectionable in a conversation with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. Three years ago, Mr. Cheney was widely reported to have muttered an angry obscene version of "get lost" to Senator Patrick Leahy on the floor of the United States Senate.
[...]
The commission has struggled to consistently explain how it applies the rules. In the Bono case involving the Golden Globe awards, the staff initially ruled in favor of the network. After lawmakers began to complain about that decision, the commission, then led by Michael K. Powell, reversed the staff decision.

Gee, would that be the Michael K. Powell, son of Colon Powell!? Yep.

And the current Bush appointee, (Kevin Martin, who previously worked for a lawfirm that represented AT&T, CBS, Viacom, Gannett, Belo, Emmis, Gray Television, and Motorola), was aghast that "Hollywood will be able to say anything they want, whenever they want."

Dude, it's called Freedom of Speech.

And he thinks nipples are obscene. Me? I like nipples, I like them so much I have a pair. All mammals have at least a pair.

You know what's really obscene, (he asked rhetorically), 3504+ dead Americans in Iraq, a record number of American deaths and a record number of Iraqi civilian deaths since the surge escalation began.



(Cross posted at Vidiotspeak)