Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category

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Anonymous victim HBGary goes to ground

Friday, February 18th, 2011

– Great follow up story to my previous one.  Got to love the Anonymous folks – speaking truth to power.  – dennis

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The computer security company hacked by members of activist group Anonymous has gone to ground as further revelations about its activites leak online.

HBGary has cancelled its appearances at public events, saying that members of staff had been threatened.

It follows the release of internal documents which appear to show the firm offered to smear Wikileaks’ supporters.

HBGary officials said the online messages could have been altered prior to publication.

The company’s founder, Greg Hoglund had been scheduled to give a talk at the RSA Security conference in San Francisco this week, but pulled out at the last minute.

The company also withdrew from an associated exhibition.

“In an effort to protect our employees, customers and the RSA Conference community, HBGary has decided to remove our booth and cancel all talks,” it said in a statement posted on its website.

According to e-mails that Anonymous claims to have taken from HBGary’s servers, the company had proposed a plan to undermine Wikileaks.

At the time, the whistleblowing website was planning to release documents relating to Bank of America.

The leaked emails also suggest that HBGary had discovered evidence that US officials were attempting to monitor visitors to websites affiliated to al Qaeda.

These messages have been posted online via the Anonymous-supported site Anonleaks.ru.

– More… ➡

Posted in And Now for Something Completely Different, CyberChaos, Politics, Technical | 1 Comment »

Hackers find plan to attack WikiLeaks

Tuesday, February 15th, 2011

– Least anyone wonder, I fully support what Assange’s done.   Governments, and I mean the U.S. especially here, keep far too much secret.   Democracy should be as transparent as it can be consistant with security but most governments err far over that mark.

– So, I applaude Anonymous and their efforts to make the control and suppresdsion of information painful for those who participate in it. – dennis

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LONDON – The computer hackers’ collective Anonymous has uncovered a proposal by a consortium of private contractors to attack and discredit WikiLeaks.

Last week Anonymous volunteers broke into the servers of HB Gary Federal, a security company that sells investigative services to companies, and posted thousands of the firm’s emails on to the internet.

The attack was in revenge for claims by the company’s chief executive Aaron Barr that he had successfully infiltrated the shadowy cyber protest network and discovered details of its leadership and structure.

Hacktivists, journalists and bloggers have since pored over the emails and discovered what appears to be a proposal that was intended to be pitched to the Bank of America to sabotage WikiLeaks and discredit journalists who are sympathetic to the whistle-blowing website.

The PowerPoint presentation claims a trio of internet security companies – HB Gary Federal, Palantir Technologies and Berico Technologies – are already prepared to attack WikiLeaks which is rumoured to be getting ready to release a cache of potentially embarrassing information on the Bank of America.

– more… ➡

Posted in And Now for Something Completely Different, CyberChaos, Politics, Technical | No Comments »

Missing China activist Gao Zhisheng ‘tortured’

Wednesday, January 12th, 2011

One of China’s most prominent human rights activists, Gao Zhisheng, has told of his torture by police during more than a year in secret detention.

The lawyer told the Associated Press he was stripped naked, beaten and pistol-whipped until he feared for his life.

Mr Gao gave the interview last April – just two weeks before he went missing.

He asked that his account only be published if he disappeared or arrived “someplace safe” like the US. Mr Gao has not been seen for several months.

The AP said it decided to publish his account given the length of his current disappearance.

Mr Gao is one of China’s leading human rights defenders. In 2006, he was sentenced to three years in prison for “inciting subversion” but the jail term was suspended for five years.

Death threats

Mr Gao said that during his 14-month ordeal he had been moved between Beijing, his native province of Shaanxi and the far western region of Xinjiang.

He said weeks of inactivity were punctuated by outbursts of brutality.

He described being bound with belts and hooded, while his jailers threatened to kill him.

“You must forget you’re human. You’re a beast,” Mr Gao said his tormentors told him in September 2009.

He said he was told by Beijing police that he was “not good enough” for prison. “Whenever we want you to disappear, you will disappear,” he quoted police as saying.

In October, Mr Gao’s daughter, Grace Geng, appealed to US President Barack Obama for help in an open letter.

She said her father had been abducted and tortured “for exercising his right to freedom of speech”.

She said she too, aged 12, was beaten by police and barred from going to school; she finally fled China with her mother and brother in 2009.

Human rights advocates often cite Mr Gao’s case along with that of Liu Xiaobo, the jailed academic awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize, as examples of what they say is the Chinese Communist Party’s increasing persecution of human rights defenders in China.

– To the original… ➡

Posted in CrashBlogging, Human Rights, Politics - The Wrong Way, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

Somalia’s al-Shabab bans mixed-sex handshake

Wednesday, January 12th, 2011

Men and women have been banned from shaking hands in a district of Somalia controlled by the Islamist group al-Shabab.

Under the ban imposed in the southern town of Jowhar, men and women who are not related are also barred from walking together or chatting in public.

It is the first time such social restrictions have been introduced.

The al-Shabab administration said those who disobeyed the new rules would be punished according to Sharia law.

The BBC’s Mohamed Moalimuu in Mogadishu says the penalty would probably be a public flogging.

The militant group has already banned music in areas that it controls, which include most of central and southern Somalia.

Somalia has not had a stable government since 1991.

The UN-backed government only controls parts of Mogadishu and a few other areas.

– To the original… ➡

Posted in CrashBlogging, Culture - How not to do it, Fundamentalism, Human Rights, Mental Irrationality, Politics - The Wrong Way, Religion - The Wrong Way, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

NZ budget almost shock-proof: IMF

Monday, September 6th, 2010

– Another thing to add to the list of reasons why I am here.

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New Zealand is among only a handful of advanced economies where the government’s budget is best placed to deal with “unexpected shocks”, an International Monetary Fund (IMF) report says.

The National government has been criticised by the opposition for increasing debt to fund tax cuts during tough economic times.

But the IMF staff report released yesterday found New Zealand had the second smallest government debt out of the 23 advanced economies it analysed, suggesting the country’s budget would be well-placed to deal with future shocks.

The Washington-based institution examined a country’s “debt limit” based on its historical track record and its current debt level, which it describes as the “fiscal space”.

“Among the advanced economies, Australia, Denmark, Korea, New Zealand and Norway generally have the most fiscal space to deal with unexpected shocks,” the report said.

– More… ➡

– Research thanks to Tony H.

Posted in CounterCurrents, New Zealand, Politics - The Right Way | No Comments »

Take a deep breath – why the world is running out of helium

Sunday, August 29th, 2010

– Not entirely sure if I’ve written on this subject before.   But, if I had money to invest, I can think of three areas where I’d probably focus myself.   Helium, Lithium and the Norwegian Kroner.

– The first two because they are chemical elements and they have unique properties that nothing else can duplicate and they are here in earth in finite amounts and our demand for them is rising.  And looks strongly like it will continue to rise.

– We know where virtually all of the Helium is on Earth is and, as the article documents, we are not conserving it very well while our need for it looks to continue to rise indefinitely.   A good bet, I’d say.

– Lithium is coming into its own because it is an essential ingredient in the zillions of batteries we are soon going to be needing and using for cars; among other things.   Bolivia has a bunch of it and the world’s major corporation are in a lather to get their hands on it.   And Bolivia’s people’s president, is having the audacity to say that the profits and benefits of mining and selling the stuff should accrue to the Bolivian people (can you imagine?).  The CIA took Allende down for far less cheek than this.   Now they are saying that vast amounts of Lithium have been discovered in Afghanistan.  That should prove interesting.

– And then Norwegian Kroners.  Well, the Norwegians are just about the only ones who’ve had vast oil wealth fall on their head that haven’t rushed out to build the world’s tallest building for the country’s ego or a personal ski-jump for each of their citizens.

– Instead, they’ve created one of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds and then had the audacity to invest it ethically.  An investment that is beating a lot of countries investing in crap.   If I was looking for a stable currency to hold, my money would be on the Norwegian Kroner.

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It is the second-lightest element in the Universe, has the lowest boiling-point of any gas and is commonly used through the world to inflate party balloons.

But helium is also a non-renewable resource and the world’s reserves of the precious gas are about to run out, a shortage that is likely to have far-reaching repercussions.

Scientists have warned that the world’s most commonly used inert gas is being depleted at an astonishing rate because of a law passed in the United States in 1996 which has effectively made helium too cheap to recycle.

The law stipulates that the US National Helium Reserve, which is kept in a disused underground gas field near Amarillo, Texas – by far the biggest store of helium in the world – must all be sold off by 2015, irrespective of the market price.

The experts warn that the world could run out of helium within 25 to 30 years, potentially spelling disaster for hospitals, whose MRI scanners are cooled by the gas in liquid form, and anti-terrorist authorities who rely on helium for their radiation monitors, as well as the millions of children who love to watch their helium-filled balloons float into the sky.

– More… ➡

Posted in And Now for Something Completely Different, General, Politics - The Right Way | 1 Comment »

Bike agenda spins cities toward U.N. control, Maes warns

Wednesday, August 18th, 2010

– Some of my American friends wonder why I left the US to live in New Zealand.   Well, here’s one reason – the nut cases that are increasingly part of the American political scene.

– This fellow is the Republican party’s candidate for Governor of Colorado – and he thinks bicycle transportation is a UN plot to subvert American values <roll of the eyes>.

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Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes is warning voters that Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper’s policies, particularly his efforts to boost bike riding, are “converting Denver into a United Nations community.”

“This is all very well-disguised, but it will be exposed,” Maes told about 50 supporters who showed up at a campaign rally last week in Centennial.

Maes said in a later interview that he once thought the mayor’s efforts to promote cycling and other environmental initiatives were harmless and well-meaning. Now he realizes “that’s exactly the attitude they want you to have.”

“This is bigger than it looks like on the surface, and it could threaten our personal freedoms,” Maes said.

He added: “These aren’t just warm, fuzzy ideas from the mayor. These are very specific strategies that are dictated to us by this United Nations program that mayors have signed on to.”

Maes said in a later interview that he was referring to Denver’s membership in the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, an international association that promotes sustainable development and has attracted the membership of more than 1,200 communities, 600 of which are in the United States.

More… ➡

Posted in CrashBlogging, Politics - The Wrong Way, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

UN declares water, sanitation ‘human right’

Saturday, July 31st, 2010

The UN General Assembly has declared access to clean water and sanitation a “human right”.

However, more than 40 countries including the United States failed to support the resolution.

The resolution adopted by the 192-member world body expresses deep concern that an estimated 884 million people lack access to safe drinking water and more than 2.6 billion people do not have access to basic sanitation.

The non-binding vote was 122-0 with 41 abstentions, including the United States, and many Western nations though Belgium, Italy, Germany, Spain and Norway supported it.

UN anti-poverty goals call for the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation to be cut in half by 2015.

– To the original… ➡

– List of the countries who voted for it (122) or abstained from voting(41).  No country voted against it:

In favour:  Afghanistan, Algeria, Andorra, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia, Brazil, Brunei Darussalam, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chile, China, Colombia, Comoros, Congo, Costa Rica, Côte d’Ivoire, Cuba, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Finland, France, Gabon, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Grenada, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Italy, Jamaica, Jordan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Lebanon, Liberia, Libya, Liechtenstein, Madagascar, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Mauritius, Mexico, Monaco, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, Qatar, Russian Federation, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Seychelles, Singapore, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Switzerland, Syria, Tajikistan, Thailand, The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tunisia, Tuvalu, United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Viet Nam, Yemen, Zimbabwe.

Abstain:  Armenia, Australia, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Ethiopia, Greece, Guyana, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Latvia, Lesotho, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Republic of Korea, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Slovakia, Sweden, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United Republic of Tanzania, United States, Zambia.

Posted in CounterCurrents, Human Rights, Politics - The Right Way, The Perfect Storm | 1 Comment »

Finland makes broadband a ‘legal right’

Thursday, July 22nd, 2010

Finland has become the first country in the world to make broadband a legal right for every citizen.

From 1 July every Finn will have the right to access to a 1Mbps (megabit per second) broadband connection.

Finland has vowed to connect everyone to a 100Mbps connection by 2015.

In the UK the government has promised a minimum connection of at least 2Mbps to all homes by 2012 but has stopped short of enshrining this as a right in law.

The Finnish deal means that from 1 July all telecommunications companies will be obliged to provide all residents with broadband lines that can run at a minimum 1Mbps speed.

Broadband commitment

Speaking to the BBC, Finland’s communication minister Suvi Linden explained the thinking behind the legislation: “We considered the role of the internet in Finns everyday life. Internet services are no longer just for entertainment.

“Finland has worked hard to develop an information society and a couple of years ago we realised not everyone had access,” she said.

It is believed up to 96% of the population are already online and that only about 4,000 homes still need connecting to comply with the law.

In the UK internet penetration stands at 73%.

The British government has agreed to provide everyone with a minimum 2Mbps broadband connection by 2012 but it is a commitment rather than a legally binding ruling.

“The UK has a universal service obligation which means virtually all communities will have broadband,” said a spokesman for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

– More… ➡

Posted in And Now for Something Completely Different, Politics - The Right Way | No Comments »

Kiwi cities rank among world’s best

Sunday, June 20th, 2010

Auckland has the world’s fourth-best quality of living, according to a new ranking dominated by European cities.

But in another ranking for eco-cities, Wellington beats out Auckland, ranking fifth worldwide.

In both categories, New Zealand cities sit at the top of the Asia Pacific, ahead of Australian contenders.

The 2010 Mercer Worldwide Quality of Living Survey was released today, ranking cities for overall quality of living based on political, socio-economic and environmental criteria as well as sanitisation, education and transport. The company also compiled a list of top eco-cities.

Spokeswoman Georgina Harley said in a statement to media that New Zealand cities had been recognised for having “quality housing close to the city”, “political stability” and “transport”.

Ms Harley also praised New Zealand cities’ “wide selection of restaurants”.

Auckland ranked fourth while Wellington was judged 12th worldwide for quality

Among eco-cities, Wellington was fifth while Auckland was deemed 13th.

– More… ➡

Posted in New Zealand, Politics - The Right Way | No Comments »

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