Tag Archives: Julian Assange

February 21, 2013 · 10:08 pm

Quotations of Chairman Mouse

Perhaps it’s a bit irresponsible, even hypocritical, of me to say (in my best Nelson Muntz voice) Haaa-ha to the news that Chinese Army Hackers have infiltrated pretty much all U.S. government computers, and plenty of our larger corporations computers as well.  After all, hacking is wrong and I resent it like hell when my stuff gets messed with.

Should We Be Worried?

Should We Be Worried?

On the other hand, hacking is nothing compared to the shit our government gets away with everyday and I can’t quite see how the world would be worse if China, and everybody else, knew in advance what kind of shit we were planning to pull.  It might even prevent conflict.

And, if the U.S. government was planning on attacking China, that  would have been a bonehead thing to do and it’s good they got stopped before they got started.

The funny thing is, the U.S. government figured out who was hacking them through information that Anonymous, the international hacker PAC that the U.S. government would like to throw in jail, made public in 2011.

I also find it comical that, despite the fact that the Swedish government and the British  Government are totally co-operating with the American government to keep Julian Assange holed up inside the Ecaudorian embassy, the U.S. government got hacked anyway.

Despite keeping Bradley Manning in jail without any trial for years, they got hacked anyway.

Now the Chinese know all the American government’s secrets – but the American people don’t.

There’s so much to say about this, and there will be more (I suspect the story is far from over) but for now let me offer this:

The internet is a form of artificial intelligence, the emerging group mind of homo-sapiens.  It is obviously an adolescent mind, obsessed with sex (and porn).  It is a mind filled with trivialities.  It is also a schizophrenic mind.  While some people are posting cute pictures of kittens, some are posting hate.  While some are screaming from the right, others are screaming from the left.

But when one part of that mind keeps secrets from the other parts, schizophrenia is the result.  Fortunately, the internet is a land without borders, a land where the information flows like water, as swift and clear as a mountain stream.  It is a mind which is trying to get past its schizophrenia, trying to pull it all together.

And it is evolving far faster than any government.

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June 19, 2012 · 9:25 pm

Ecuador?

Julian Assange is currently holed up in the Ecuadorian embassyin London, and seeking asylum in that country.  I hope they grant it to him and the Brits, the Swedes and the U.S. all get over it and leave him alone.

Those aren’t gold bars in the picture, but they might as well be

The rape charge is absurd.  It doesn’t meet the definition of rape in any country other than Sweden.  Basically, he didn’t put on a condom.  That may be a bit of a social faux pas in our STD conscious modern culture, but the girl (who may have been a bit star struck and stupid, I’ll grant that) had sex with him anyway, quite willingly.  So, it wasn’t rape.

Secondly, everybody knows it’s not really about the rape charge.  This is political intimidation, pure and  simple.

What I don’t understand, though, is this:  why Ecuador?  They must have given him some indication that they’d grant him asylum.  I’m sure he didn’t throw a dart at a map blindfolded (which is pretty much how I wound up in Thailand and that sure turned out to be a mistake).  If he’d had a choice, I’m sure he’d have gone with one of the nicer lifestyle countries, like Japan or Canada or Swe…oops, scratch that.

His own country, Australia, has pretty much said they won’t protect him against the courts in Britain, Sweden and/or the U.S.  It’s an indication that, although nobody likes the U.S. government any more, nobody wants to fuck with it.  Well, maybe North Korea and Iran. Now, maybe Ecuador.

I have a suggestion for Ecuador (and this would probably work for Colombia, Peru or Bolivia as well):  if you really want to piss off the bigshots, and give yourselves a huge financial boost at the same time, just legalize cocaine.  Marijuana, too, just because it’s logical, but cocaine is your region’s major product.  It’s as if China made rice illegal, or Ireland whiskey.

Legalizing it would draw tourists from all over the world, give your farmers a cash crop, make life a lot easier for your police and give a big, fat poke in the eye to the CIA.

But I digress.  I hope that Ecuador grants Assange asylum, and that he is able to continue with the very important work of making it harder for powerful people to keep secrets.

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October 13, 2011 · 8:32 pm

A Tale of Two Teatards

I may have said this before, but it bears repeating: If it weren’t for the real and terrifying possibility that Herman Cain will be the next president of the United States, he would be the most  comical character in the GOP circus.  You would think that his comments about

Tony Krvaric - He's no Julian Assange

Uzbekistan (“No, I don’t know who the president of You beki beki beki stan stan is, and I don’t care about all these insignificant little countries.”) would end his bid, but Republican voters weren’t bothered by that a bit.  So, he doesn’t know what’s going on in the world?  So, he acts arrogantly toward smaller nations?  They love that shit.

Of course, when you have Rick Santorum saying “I want to go to war with China” (exact words), it’s pretty hard to be the craziest one in the party, but the Pizza Man is giving it a fair go.  Now comes the news that his famous 999 tax plan (9% corporate income tax, 9% personal income tax, 9% sales tax) was probably borrowed from a 2003 version of the computer game SimCity.

I don’t object to a simplified tax plan.  Ross Perot (the Ron Paul of the 90s) suggested that a long time ago, and I agreed with him.  Whatever sytem of taxes we use, he said, it should all fit on one sheet of paper and you shouldn’t need an accountant to figure it out.  Makes sense.

Nor do I object to borrowing from a computer game.  I once read (again I’m paraphrasing) “Don’t reject a good idea just because it comes from a bad source.”  I thought, ‘Hey, I just read this in the Reader’s Digest.  QED.’

What I object to is that it’s a horrible plan, which hits the poor much harder than the rich, and is doomed to failure, because poor people don’t have that much money.  It worked in SimCity because that’s not a real city and the numbers don’t actually have to match up.

Kip Katsarelis, an executive for the company that makes SimCity, said “Our game design team thought that an easy to understand taxation system would allow players to focus on building their cities and have fun thwarting giant lizard attacks, rather than be buried by overly complex financial systems.”

The other evil Republican I want to talk about tonight is Tony Krvaric chairman of the San Diego County Republican party.  He apparently thought it was funny to have twitter accounts under a bunch of different names – names of San Diego Democrats.  When he got caught, he just said ‘haha, I thought it was funny.’   Did I mention that he is the San Diego County Republican chairman, and not a 13 year old child?

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September 2, 2011 · 9:37 pm

End of the Week Random Thoughts

First of all, TGIF never rang truer.  Kids got back to school this week and Sam to football, this year he had to move up an age group.  So far, he says, it’s no problem.  We had a lot of phone calls back and forth about a course that’s probably not going to happen.  I did quite a bit of writing, but

Jealous diplomats not invited to Bunga Bunga parties criticize Berlusconi

it pales in comparison to the writing I didn’t do.  A few translations.  A few computer problems.

So, in most ways it was a pretty ordinary week but it sure seems like Monday was just yesterday.

Why isn’t Dick Cheney in jail?  Didn’t he just basically confess to multiple crimes, in print, with the publication of his book?  Seriously, what does it take?  What does it fucking take?

O.K., I understand a newspaper running somewhat of a teaser headline and, I must admit, it’s partially my own fault for being interested in celebrity gossip in the 1st place, but this was just downright deceptive.  On the Halfington Pustule there was a headline something along the lines of “Look and see what Hollywood superstars got trashed out of their minds last night.”  So, I flip through to the story and they talk about how Kirsten Dunst (who I idolize) and some other actress (who I’d never heard of) were out staggering around the streets from bar to bar and then at the end of the article it was like “Ha-ha! They were just shooting a film.”

There ought to be some kind of an internet law against wasting my time.

Julian Assange has released like about 200,000 more secret government cables.  Some people (like me) are still calling him a hero, and some people are demanding his head.  A couple of the main headers i glanced at revealed no huge surprises.

Hillary Clinton wanted to get biographical info on North Korean diplomats sounds sinister, but if you want to send somebody a birthday card you need a certain amount of biographical data.  Everybody thinks Sarkozy is a little wannabe Napoleon, Berlusconi parties too hard and Angela Merkl is kind of boring.  Wow.

But they’ve exposed some big stuff recently.  I had no idea that U.N. relief workers would coerce hungry people to give sex for food.

A lot of people are saying that Assange is reckless for not having redacted names, and they may have a point but there’s one thing I’m pretty sure of.  Wikileaks has changed the diplomacy game moving forward.  There are two ways it could go – even more secretive, coded, encrypted messages (the aspens turn all at once) or just plain openness.

I have no guarantee that openness in government affairs will lead to a golden era of peace and prosperity for all mankind, but it’s the one thing we’ve never tried, so let’s give it a shot and see if it works.

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July 31, 2011 · 7:12 pm

The Debt Ceiling Crisis and Wag the Dog

Everybody remembers Wag the Dog, right?  1997, Robert de Niro, Dustin Hoffman.  A fictional president gets caught touching up a very underage girl and his public relations team swings into action to create a fake war and divert the public’s attention until after the election.  In the book,

Kirsten Dunst as a Fleeing Albanian

the President was Bush 41 and it was all about the war in Iraq, but films take liberties.  Sometimes it’s a good thing, sometimes it’s a bad thing.

Anyway, pretty much nobody denies that the press is used to distract the public from certain issues that powerful people might find embarrassing.  I wrote a couple of days ago about how the Huffington Post, for no apparent reason, removed the words “we’re going to hurt some people” from a story about a group of Republicans talking about the debt ceiling debate.  If those words were involved in the debate, it could be bad for Republicans.  Another example is from 2004, how the New York Times knew about the warrantless wiretapping in October, but delayed the story until after November because (they actually said this) it might have “negatively impacted” the election.  That is, Kerry might have won.

I suspect something like that is going on with this Debt Ceiling Crisis.  Newspaper headlines have been about nothing else for the last two weeks, with a slight break when Amy Winehouse died because, whatever else is happening in the world, celebrities die and the news media loves it when they do.  The massacre in Norway was kind of hard to avoid, too.

It’s been quite a while since we’ve had any detailed updates on what’s happening in Syria, Yemen or even Libya.  Haven’t heard much about Bradley Manning or Julian Assange for awhile, either.  Of course, there’s no change in the Bradley Manning case (still hasn’t had a trial) and Assange is also going through some legal maneuvers which can make for a dry news story, but still.  I don’t know that what they are trying to hide has to do with any of those stories, or whether there is some other big financial or sexual scandal they are trying to hide, but I strongly suspect they are hiding something.

It’s just too much ink on one issue for too long for it to be otherwise.

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