A good socio-economic news channel

There are others that I may have mentioned in the past, like The Real News or Redacted Tonight but this morning I had breakfast with Professor Wolf and I really liked it because it tells the naker truth, no pretense of anything else your life space is smaller, economic recovery for the rich is not doing anything for your rightful depression other than selling you pills, and they want you to believe you are a slave and nothing more.

That's how I like my news: no nonsense, it makes me feel more energetic by the morning full of anticapitalist energy, wanting to do things.

These are their sites:

• Democracy at Work: Economic Update 
• Professor Richard D. Wolff

Macron and May agree to destroy Internet freedom of speech

They agreed to force Internet companies to bar nonviolent "extremism". The meeting at Paris got almost no news coverage in the West and I must rely on RT's Dan Glazebrook op-ed (the only other medium to report on it was Al Jazeera).

Specifically, what was announced was that both countries would be introducing heavy fines for internet companies that failed to remove what they, very loosely, defined as “extremist content.” (...)

It was former PM David Cameron who originally came up with the idea that “nonviolent extremism” should be criminalized alongside violent extremism. Intriguingly, as an example of what he meant, he included the idea that the “West is bad,” as well as elsewhere arguing that the promotion of “wild conspiracy theories” would also qualify.

This is exactly what Macron and May, both managers for the Bankster Mafia, to attempt to destroy freedom of speech in NATOland. The idea is not so much to clamp down on terrorist propaganda outlets (many of which are actually backed and actively protected by the British and French states) but to impede any form of dissident expression within the Western Empire or at least its European province. 

Their problem is as follows:

For example, an RT interview I did about British collusion with terrorism shortly before the election got over one and half million views on Facebook – higher than the daily readership of the Daily Mail. Jonathan Pie’s fantastic piece tearing apart the Tory’s ‘strong and stable’ nonsense, got 11 million views. That is two and half million more than the combined circulation of the Daily Mail, Daily Express, Guardian, Sun, Daily Star, Times, Telegraph, Evening Standard, and the Mirror and Metro – the country’s ten leading newspapers.  And hilariously, when I had just watched one of Theresa May’s speeches on YouTube during the campaign, immediately afterwards, YouTube automatically played Liar Liar, the anti-May anthem that reached number four in the UK pop charts last week. And I suspect YouTube auto played that video after anyone watched anything about Theresa May due to the algorithms that they employ.

All this is pretty much like book (and witch/heretic) burning in the early Modern Ages, when the oligarchs felt threatened by the new invention: print! Just like then, but multiplied times a thousand at least, the new media and its power-democratization capability feels threatening to those who try to retain their dinosaur power heavily reliant on mass-media, which, the more they get manipulated, the less they are watched/read (because there are alternatives, reasonably good, critical and diverse ones). 

Probably not even Goebbels (on whom the likes of May and Macron base their ideas) would be able to survive something like that,  Berlusconi didn't, his Serbian precursor Milosevic didn't either, the declared admirer of Hitler, Turkish President Erdogan, is struggling all the time against the likes of YouTube and Twitter: he bans them once and again but it's never enough, more so with people in the more totalitarian countries getting quickly used to skip censorship via TOR. Not even a giant like China can control it, because it's like the first law of chaos: you just cannot have absolute power, nor absolute control, the more repressive you get, the less you can actually control in the mid run.

It does not surprise me the least with dinosaurs like May or Trump, they are just too old to know, they belong to a long gone era, but Macron is young and supposedly quite smart, how can he also fall for that megalomaniac fallacy? Well, he's probably too "viejuno" or "viejoven", as they say in Spain, i.e. "old-like" or "old-young" (just look at his haircut and his clothes, he seems taken from an old Hitchcock movie), and not at all as smart as the oligarchs sell him: one thing is smart-lackey (which does not really need true intelligence only operational smarts) and another thing is smart-brilliant (which is automatically critical and scientific, even if sometimes not too practical). That's the difference between Thatcher (brilliant even if truly evil) and Reagan (a mere sockpuppet with performance skills), Macron seems to be rather in the latter category (and so is May of course, a quite gray woman).

Glaezbrook's conclusions:

So that’s what this new crackdown on the internet is really about; it’s about regaining control of that narrative. It’s about turning the CEOs of YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Google into the Rupert Murdochs of the 21st century – the political allies and mouthpieces of the British state and the capitalist class, and doing this by forging a new relationship that explicitly punishes them if they refuse to play ball.

(...)

The Open Rights Group has warned that “to push on with these extreme proposals for internet clampdowns would appear to be a distraction from the current political situation and from effective measures against terror."

“The government already has extensive surveillance powers. Conservative proposals for automated censorship of the internet would see decisions about what British citizens can see online being placed in the hands of computer algorithms, with judgments ultimately made by private companies rather than courts. Home Office plans to force companies to weaken the security of their communications products could put all of us at a greater risk of crime.”

Those who are worried about extremism should be calling for an end to the British intelligence services’ collaboration and facilitation of terrorism and the extradition of those who have carried out or facilitated attacks abroad, as well as an international investigation and prosecutions of all those involved.

Theresa May’s new proposals do nothing to end the impunity of her own government in the grooming and facilitation of terrorism. Rather, they serve to extend this impunity. They must be resisted.

Hopefully they will fail (again) but let us be most vigilant and ready to fight against this kind of pseudo-democratic fascism. It is extremely dangerous and we must indeed resist it: we need more freedom of speech, not less.

Fukushima myths vs facts

Fukushima emergency, what can we do? discusses today eight myths found in the Internet regarding what is certainly the World's worst nuclear catastrophe, warning against exaggeration, while also against denial.

This is a fact (actual radioactive deposition measured in the immediate aftermath of Fukushima catastrophe):

This is a myth (it actually represents risk of tsunami after the March 2011 Fukushima earthquake and not radiation in any way):

All the story at Fukushima emergency...


Update: the original post seems to have been deleted but I feel I don't have a choice here because it already has comments, etc. So I'm copy-pasting from the RSS feed for your reference:

We’ve spotted a number of myths about the Fukushima nuclear disaster on Facebook and in forums that we’d like nothing more than to debunk. The age of many of these myths is irrelevant, as every day brings forth “new” posts rooted in their misinformation.

 1, THE INFAMOUS PACIFIC OCEAN DEATH MAP

No, this is not a map of anything related to radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. It is a map of potential tsunami heights from NOAA.

 While this misconception has been integral to creating awareness broadly over the ongoing situation, it has also seeded a lot of misinformation.

2, FUKUSHIMA RADIATION HIT SAN FRANCISCO

A recent video of a man at Half Moon Bay whose geiger counter alerted of high radiation levels while standing on the beach went viral, and has created an echo chamber of misunderstanding.

His geiger counter was detecting radiation, although it was naturally occurring radiation from the thorium-rich granite within the sand, and not from Fukushima. It’s equally perplexing that an official response from Dean Peterson, county environmental health director “noted that many innocuous items could spike the radiation levels in an area, including red-painted disposable eating utensils“. This seemingly sarcastic statement only furthered unrest over the issue, and took focus away from credible sources which have been reporting the phenomenon for the better part of a century.

Analysis of kelp has found that it has been contaminated to a certain low level. To what extent might be revealed by the further ongoing studies as the one lead by Ken Buesseler conducting analyses all along the West Coast from Alaska down to South California seaching for eventual Cesium 134/137 and Strontium contamination. ( Cesium‐137 = 1.4 Bq/m3 Cesium‐134 <0 .2="" bq="" font="" m3="">

Only a detailed mapped analysis would reveal the real extent of the Fukushima contamination of the ocean along the West Coast. Unfortunately no such study is at the time being conducted on West Coast soils.

Related: Safecast blog – Radiation on California Beaches

3, ALL FISH IN THE PACIFIC ARE NOW RADIOACTIVE

Based on test results from both California and Alaska, trace amounts of Fukushima radiation are in fact showing up in a few coastal fish, but certainly not all of them. Currently measured levels are at this point very, very low.

According to the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the oceanic plume is just starting to hit Alaska, and will begin hitting the majority of the West Coast in March2014. The numbers they are predicting will also be very low.

While all governments have proven to be a rather untrustworthy source for information on Fukushima, there are independent groups doing their own Cesium 134/Cesium 137 only testing up and down the coast and posting test results, and they too are not showing important level of contamination.

Though again they should test for strontium 90 and other radionuclides as well.

Related: Vancouver Food Radiation Monitoring, Loki Fish, and Berkeley University’s RadWatch.

While fish closer to Japan are showing high levels of radiation, on our coastal fisheries as far as Cesium 134 it is not yet present in high amount.

But you have to keep in mind that any amount of internal contamination, low or high can be fatal.

4, AN UNDERGROUND EXPLOSION IS HAPPENING AT FUKUSHIMA 
Multiple reports by TEPCO around Christmas 2013 of steam rising from Reactor 3 have prompted interpretations from all corners of the internet.

Steam rising from Reactor 3 is nothing new. It happens regularly, and has been happening since day one of the incident. 

What caused the steam over Fukushima reactor 3? There are a few reasons; The steam has a habit of forming after rainfall in the area, and some experts say the rain is making its way down to the reactor core, heating up, and evaporating.

Many people also believe the reactor core has breached both primary and secondary containment, and portions of it may still be fissioning which produces steam. Steam is not a good thing, but it is not a new thing, and there was no underground explosion. 

In fact multiple radiactive toxic gassing is permanently occuring on Daiichi site, that is very alarming in itself. Continually releasing a heavy load of radionuclides into our atmosphere, carried in every direction by the winds, bioaccumulation into the sea and onto the lands.

5, THE OTHER MAP; NRC FALLOUT MAP

After inquiring with the NRC directly, this was their response: 

Hello Mr. Mattingly, 

The “radiation plume” map was an anonymously produced falsehood and not a creation of the NRC or any other government agency. The creators of the false map also used the logo of the Australian nuclear regulator. The “Pacific deadzone” map has also been debunked as a distortion of a tsunami height simulation. The third map in that collage is also a complete falsehood. 

Please let me know if you have any additional questions. 

Scott Burnell Public Affairs Officer U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission 

This doesn’t mean that North America was not hit with radiation; The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization runs an International Monitoring System with 321 sensors worldwide. 

Below is a map of what those sensors picked up. According to the sensor data, 1000 bequerels per square meter (1Kbq/m2) fell on the Western Seaboard of North America. If you would like to view the actual sensor data, accompanied with additional maps, you can do so here.

6, EVERYTHING IN THE PACIFIC IS DYING BECAUSE OF FUKUSHIMA
I am sure many of you have seen all of the reports of mass die-offs all over the pacific, herring in British Columbia bleeding from their eyeballs, the sea stars melting away all along the entire coast, polar bears and sea lions have mysterious oozing sores and their fur is falling out, a two headed whale washing up on shore, the sardine population collapsing, and countless more.

The problem with this myth is that scientists have yet to give a solid explanation for any of these. Not a single one of them. Is it from Fukushima? We don’t know. We thought we would mention this one as it is noteworthy, and everyone wants to know.

Is the entire ocean floor now 98% covered in dead sea life like many articles are stating? No. This National Geographic article is where all of that originated is only talking about one localized area, and it is only sea salps they are talking about. Again, they do not know what is causing it, and the entire ocean floor is not covered with dead animals.

As much as we would love to give you a solid answer on this topic, the data to prove, or disprove it, simply isn’t available at this point, so there is no point in assuming.

Though they are several species severely affected and dying in various locations, there might be actually several factors involved : acidification of the ocean, virus, Fukushima contamination. 

At this point it is therefore not conclusive and totally unfitting to amalgam all those happenings and to say that they are all caused only by Fukushima contamination.

7, POTASSIUM IODIDE WILL PRESERVE MY HEALTH 
 
The answer to this is double-sided; Different types of radiation do different things to your body. Some mimic calcium, some mimic potassium, some mimic iodine, etc. Potassium iodide is a form of iodine. When you take it, it fills up your thyroid gland with non-radioactive iodine, thus not leaving any room for radioactive iodine to be taken in.

It will only protect your thyroid. Potassium Iodine only protects your thyroid gland from Iodine 131 a radionuclide released at the first stage of a nuclear disaster and it has a radioactive decay half-life of about eight days . And it should therefore be taken at the very early stage of the disaster or few hors prior to enter a contaminated zone. It does not protect your body from the many other radionuclides released during a nuclear disaster.

Potassium iodide therefore should only be taken in the event of a radiological disaster. It has the potential to cause adverse health effects, however the potential risks are far lower than allowing radioactive iodine into your thyroid.

At the moment, Fukushima is not releasing anymore Iodine 131 into the atmosphere to warrant taking it. It is however a good idea to eat foods that are naturally high in iodine such as Southern Atlantic Seaweed, and leafy greens to not only protect yourself from possible future releases, but also for your health in general. 

If there is another major event at Fukushima, or elsewhere, you should have a conversation with a licensed medical professional on how much you should be taking, and for how long, depending on your geographical location, and proximity to the event.

8, PEOPLE NEED TO EVACUATE THE WEST COAST 
If the ongoing situation at Fukushima became toxic enough to warrant an evacuation of the West Coast, there would really be no safe place to evacuate to.

The radiation could circle the globe in a matter of days, just as the original plume from Fukushima did, and eventually pollute the entire planet.

However for smaller incidents, it’s not a bad idea to avoid the initial dispersal zone if it’s an
option.


CONCLUSION

We advise people, to read, dig deeper and verify any news article before to believe and share out an information, the gravity of the ongoing Fukushima disaster and its slow but sure contamination of our biosphere and of our food chain is bad enough, exaggerations, sensationalism are totally unneeded and uncalled for.

We should stick to trhe facts and not extrapolate too far, we should all act with a proper sense of responsibility, face the real problem but not feed into a paranoia.

We advise people to learn to measure radiation, and to learn as well basic radiation protective measures.

We advise you as a precautionary measure to not eat Pacific Ocean products, any tiny radionuclide present in any food is just a Russian roulette bullet waiting in due time to hit you.

Note: the original entry was not written by Citizen Perth, the usual author of Fukushima emergency..., but by some Dun Renard. This may have something to do with the deletion (???) - ask them.

Spain charges against political dissidence online

The so called Spider Operative got 21 citizens, largely Basque but also from other parts of the residual empire, arrested under the anti-terrorist law for allegedly supporting terrorism and attacking ETA victims. The propaganda machinery, alias mass media, quickly spread the government's version without any contrast. The reality? Not much. 

The propaganda centerpiece was what a single individual, whose name has not been made public and whose Twitter account was deleted, posted: such blunt aggressive and clearly illegal comments that he is strongly suspected to be a police agent provocateur. The other 20? Nothing worth mentioning. 

So why were they arrested? The experience of Aitor Martínez (pictured) is very informative: he was never informed of the specific charges and the state-appointed attorney acted as accusation.

First of all Aitor was illegally arrested because the agents did not identify themselves as such. This is common practice but it is blatantly illegal. 

Second, he was accused of generic "computer crimes", with no detail whatsoever. He has gathered information that police already had a political file of his person, reporting him as member of the Basque National Liberation Movement and collaborator with a website, surely Topatu.info.

Worst of all was the attitude of the state-appointed attorney (under the anti-terrorist law you cannot appoint an attorney of your choice). She accused him of "doing something" and when he rejected her suspicions of drawing any ETA icon, she began asking him if he may have used black eagle (ancient Navarrese flag) or icons for prisoner amnesty, all perfectly legal stuff. 

Aitor Martínez also mentions that another girl, who was questioned before him, said that all she had done was to go to a National Day rally. 

In the propaganda video of the Spanish Military Police (Guardia Civil) the names of all the accused except precisely the one who posted the really criminal tweets are publicly revealed. This may not have such major consequences in the Basque Country, sadly used to decades or even centuries of the worst repression, but imagine the stigma that can befall to a youngster from Asturias or other localities of the state where some of the victims of this political raid are from. 

Aitor suspects that the author of the criminal tweets is an agent provocateur of the Guardia Civil itself, who provided single-handedly the propaganda material that has been used to accuse all the rest. 

He thinks that the goal of the operative is to spread fear.

Meanwhile fascist criminals are left at large

Basque MP Sabino Cuadra (pictured) denounced the recent aggression that he suffered in Jaén at the hands of fascist groups rallied precisely by the so-called Association of Victims of Terrorism (AVT), as well as other far-right groups, and how these enjoy impunity under the Spanish repressive system. 

Cuadra is considered by many the most outspoken "Spanish" MP,  who is able to call things by their real name.

Also the known criminal torturers Antonio González Pacheco ("Billy the Kid") and Jesús Muñecas, who are persecuted in Argentina under the principle of global jurisdiction for crimes against humankind, have been protected by the Spanish political court Audiencia Nacional (the Inquisition), allowing them to remain at large.

Erdogan desperate: blocks Twitter in Turkey

The authoritarian and growingly besieged Turkish PM Tayyip Erdogan has just crossed another red line by blocking the social network Twitter in the bicontinental state. 

The popular uprising against his corrupt and reckless government, whose leading export is jihadist terrorism to Syria, has not ceased at all, rather the opposite, in spite of brutal repression. The only thing this simple minded thug can think of to hold to his "Neo-Ottomanist" power is to attack freedom of speech in the Internet. The latest is the banning of Twitter, in spite of the disagreement of his political comrade and President of the Republic Abdullah Gül. 

It seems obvious that the days of Erdogan and his rotten fascist camarilla on power in Ankara are set. The only question is when and how he will be forced to leave his throne of oppression.

Source: WG[es] (link 1, link 2).

Snowden's leaks have a new portal

→ https://firstlook.org/theintercept/

We shall not live under fear

I will have some news soonTM on what will happen with my political blogging activity, although I admit I have not cut all corners yet. But meanwhile...

Someone sent me this news link on the absolutely megalomaniac and scaringly Orwellian logos of the actually megalomaniac and scaringly Orwellian US program Total Information Awareness (TIA).

The truth behind the threat:
"Whoever grabs too much, squeezes too little"
(Castilian saying)

In my infancy universe, the TIA was actually a Spanish mockery of the CIA in which two rather dumb and useless secret agents always ended up doing it wrong. While this may not be the case anymore at all, I can't but find ridiculously pretentious the propaganda distilled by those logos and the equally propagandistic TV series The Last Enemy, which aims to justify such totalitarian control.

In fact, the striking issue with all US civilian surveillance programs is that their real aim seems to be to instill fear, because they cannot obviously process such a huge amount of data, even with the help of the most powerful computers. Absolute control is absolutely impossible, science and reality demonstrate once and again.

While the White House and the Pentagon may be doing their best to look as scary as Hitler, or even worse, the reality is much more like Chaplin narrated it in his awesome movie The Great Dictator. They are just apes like us and they bleed exactly like us and that means that they also slack exactly like us and commit brutal errors exactly like us. "They" are not perfect at all. In fact the system tends to select rather imperfect but obedient minions, what makes them extremely vulnerable to degeneration.

That's probably why they attempt to project a very scary shadow. Of course their megalomania and totalitarianism is very scary but, as Orwell correctly said, fascism cannot succeed where people can still laugh at the goose step.

And all those scary icons are nothing but their pathetic form of goose step and their goal is clearly to instill fear. 

But we shall not live under fear, rather we live with much higher emotions: LOVE and RAGE! 

And a good laugh, of course.

Basque Country: Inquisition censors major news website, freedom of speech under siege! (updated)

I have to (briefly) interrupt my blogging hiatus to report a most brutal abuse against freedom of speech in the Basque Country: the Spanish Inquisition (Audiencia Nacional) has decreed the illegality of the news website Ateak Ireki (Open the Gates), which has been a major and steady source of information for this blog and lots of people. 

Being apparently located outside the Spanish jurisdiction, the website is still available from outside the Castilian imperial borders and via proxy but cannot be directly accessed through any known server under Spanish jurisdiction. 

The decree is not firm and can be appealed but we have seen before how such legal routes are delayed indefinitely in the cases of newspapers and other media, so it could take many years or even decades to reverse this censorship by mere legal means, if at all. 

Naturally I can't but flatly reject and denounce this new attack against freedom of speech in the Basque Country by the occupant power of the South. There's little more that I can say other than thank the people behind Ateak Ireki for all their hard work and hope that new venues of free information are opened soon. 

I must of course underline how this is yet another major aggression by the neo-fascist regime of Spain against the feeble and nearly non-existent "peace process", but, even more importantly, against the most basic human rights: freedom of opinion, freedom of speech and freedom of information.

There is only one way out of this perpetual Spanish fascist imposition: independence!

Sources[es]: Borroka Garaia Da!, Naiz Info.


Update: I'm still getting the feed from Ateak Ireki, 11 entries in the last few days with contents like:

• Iruña-Pamplona pro-popular fiestas movement Gora Iruñea! seeks to get a primordial place in the day-by-day of the city.
• Catalan SEPC union's dance team to perform in Pamplona.
• Basque prisoners continue their hunger strike in Seville for their rights.
• Rock star "El Drogas" shows solidarity with the squatters of Sanduzelain.
• Five Navarrese political prisoners could be released after the European Human Rights Court resolution against the Parot doctrine.
• High Speed Rail (AHT-TAV) works stopped by direct action at Kadreita.
• Marine Pueyo (former city councilor) speaks for the struggle in favor of the Basque flag and against suppression of human rights. 
• Basque student union Ikasle Abertzaleak comments on the irregularities in the latest Student Dance Festival.
• Video-report on the struggle for the Basque banner in Navarre.
• Pie throwing fun action in solidarity with the activists who threw one such pie against the totalitarian President of Navarre Yolanda Barcina (who are being subject to trial).

And then of course a commentary on their own forced closure, which I translate here in full [in square brackets = my own translator notes]:

#AdierazpenAskatasuna The Audiencia Nacional decrees the closure of Ateak Ireki.

The Spanish emergency tribunal bases its decision on a report by the [military police corps] Guardia Civil to relate this medium with Herrira [prisoner rights movement recently persecuted by the same court] and this way end its journalistic activity. The resolution of the AN can be appealed.

Ateak Ireki could be closed by the Audiencia Nacional. The Spanish emergency tribunal bases this new attack against freedom of speech on a report by the Guardia Civil, which relates this communication medium with the movement Herrira, against which it acted on September 30, arresting 18 of its members.

The Audiencia Nacional has issued an order demanding to several telecommunication media to impede access to Ateak Ireki, as well as to the closure of their social media accounts and the webpage itself.

This decision is not yet firm and can be appealed, although we ignore if in the upcoming days or hours the webpage or our social networks will stop being operative. 

A sad day for democracy

From Ateak Ireki, in a preliminary emergency evaluation, we denounce this new attack against freedom of speech and information. We want to recall that Ateak Ireki arose from the impulse of dozens of Navarrese journalists who, after the closure of Apurtu.org, advocated for small media like ours to have space in the communication panoramic and for the freedom of information and speech to be respected. Therefore we believe that today is a very sad day for democracy in the Basque Country and that again the Audiencia Nacional is deciding what must and must not read the citizenry, just like the Spanish Inquisition used to. Ourselves resolve to confront this new attack against democracy with the only weapon on our hands: the exercise of freedom of speech.

USA: encrypted mail service fights FBI bullying till the end

Literally, Lavabit had to shut down in order not to yield to the demands of the FBI to give them encryption codes, which would have destroyed the credibility of the secure mail provider.

The case seems directly related to the persecution of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

From Russia Today (emphasis mine):

The Federal Bureau of Investigation secretly obtained a court order compelling Lavabit, the email service used by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, to hand over its private SSL key, thereby allowing the FBI to monitor Lavabit's users.

The FBI order was handed down on July 16, according to Wired, shortly after Lavabit refused to bypass the company’s internal security systems to facilitate a government request asking the email provider to trace the internet IP address of an individual user.

Government documents indicate that the FBI sent Lavabit a so-called “pen register” order on June 28, forcing the Texas-based company to record the connection information belonging to a particular user each time that user logged in to check his or her email. Lavabit was then required to turn that data over to the government.

The pen register came down just weeks after the first Snowden leaks were published in the Guardian and The Washington Post. Among the unveiled programs was PRISM - a massive electronic data mining program employed to collect and store communication data extracted from internet companies including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and others.

While the identity of the FBI’s Lavabit target was not disclosed in the filings, the suspect is described as having committed violations under the Espionage Act, indicating with near certainty that Snowden was the motivating factor.

The June 28 order, as seen by Wired, required Lavabit to turn over all “technical assistance necessary to accomplish the installation and use of the pen/trap device.”

When the company - which is now embroiled in a court battle with the government - refused to comply, authorities filed a motion to compel, saying the single user “enabled Lavabit’s encryption services, and this Lavabit would not provide the requested information.”

“The representative of Lavabit indicated that Lavabit had the technical capability to decrypt the information, but that Lavabit did not want to ‘defeat its own system,’” the order went on.

Prosecutors soon asked that founder Ladar Levinson and Lavabit be held in contempt “for its disobedience and resistance to these lawful orders.” A search warrant was issued demanding “all information necessary to decrypt communications sent to or from the Lavabit email account [redacted] including encryption keys and SSL keys.”

A search warrant and SSL key would grant the government unobstructed access to Lavabit’s servers, and a court informed Levinson that he would be fined $5,000 each day he refused to hand over the necessary information.

“I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly 10 years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit,” Levinson wrote on August 8. “After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations.”

Now embroiled in a costly legal battle, Levinson has already raised over $20,000 to pay the necessary legal fees. That makes up half of Levinson’s goal, he said, because unfortunately “defending the constitution is expensive.”

UPDATE: Lavabit has issued a statement in response to aforementioned revelations.

"The vast majority of the court records in Lavabit LLC’s fight for internet privacy and security are now public. Although most of the documents have been redacted, 23 court orders, pleadings, and other documents are now available to the public while the case is on appeal in the Fourth Circuit.

Lavabit was created so every law-abiding citizen has access to a secure and private email service. During an investigation into several Lavabit user accounts, the federal government demanded both unfettered access to all user communications and a copy of the Lavabit encryption keys used to secure web, instant message and email traffic. After having a motion to quash the search warrant was denied by Judge Claude Hilton of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Notably Judge Hilton served on the FISA Court from 2000 through 2007. Judge Hilton subsequently issued a $5,000 per day contempt of court citation thus forcing Lavabit to surrender their encryption keys. Ladar Levison, the owner and operator of Lavabit, then made the difficult decision to suspend operations and “limit the damage to user’s 4th amendment right to privacy.”

The statement goes on to remind users and privacy advocates that by suspending operation, Levinson has come to rely on donations to fund the ongoing legal battle. It also describes how the new information about the NSA has led to a massive uptick in subscriptions.

While catering to a niche market for most of it’s history, the recent revelations about American surveillance efforts caused what Mr. Levison describes as a “massive increase in user registrations, usage and revenue in our final month of operation.” When the service was suspended on August 8th, it boasted over 410,000 registered users, of which approximately 10,000 were paying $8 or $16 a year for premium features like encrypted storage."

NSA police regime scandal: Greenwald confirms Snowden's reports

Glenn Greenwald

NSA analyst Glenn Greenwald admits that the powerful spy agency can do almost anything in your computer:

Greenwald said the existence of these analyst search programs are in line with the claims of Edward Snowden, who first leaked details of the NSA's surveillance programs last month.

 

"It's an incredibly powerful and invasive tool, exactly of the type that Mr. Snowden described," Greenwald said.

NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander and House Intelligence leaders have previously downplayed Snowden's access to NSA data. Greenwald said the revelation of this search capability deserves a response from NSA officials.

"NSA officials are going to be testifying before the Senate on Wednesday, and I defy them to deny that these programs work exactly as I just said," Greenwald said.

Greenwald also called on lawmakers to push for more information about the NSA's surveillance programs.

"The real issue here is that what the NSA does is done in complete secrecy. Nobody really monitors who they are eavesdropping on," Greenwald said. "So the question of abuse is one that the Congress ought to be investigating much more aggressively."

Excerpted from a Yahoo! News article. 

NSA police regime: your user passwords are also being released to the cops

Internet corporations are releasing all kind of private information to the NSA or FBI cops including passwords and other secret elements such as encryption codes and encryption seeds (SALT), etc.

That way they can access your accounts and even supplant you. 

Of all companies questioned by CNET, only Google declared to have never given away such data, adding that they have an attorney team to deal with such issues. 

Microsoft neither confirmed nor denied but said that, would they do it they would not reveal passwords, SALT codes nor encryption algorithms.

All the rest (Apple, Facebook, AOL, Verizon, AT&T, Time Warner Cable y Comcast) declined to comment, what amounts to a "yes". The FBI also declined to comment. 

Source: Webguerrillero[es], citing Russia Today.

Turkey: repression continues

As mentioned yesterday, the Islamist authorities of Turkey have launched a campaign of political repression, arresting many dozens, while hundreds were arrested in the general strike of Monday. 

But the campaign of political repression is not only directed against protesters: the four TV channels which gave some half-decent coverage to which is maybe the most important episode in the history of Turkey in this century, were heavily fined, in a clear totalitarian attack against freedom of speech. 

But the most "dangerous" foe that Erdogan faces is the Internet. And he knows it. His government is therefore preparing a new law that aims to restrict access to social networks. People have also been arrested in Izmir on the grounds of "provocative tweets". 

Recently Erdogan claimed, in his usual fascist style, that "a tweet can be more dangerous than a car bomb". 

AKP speaker Ali Sahin claimed that there is "a conspiracy that attempts to depose the government using the social networks" and, shamelessly parroting his boss, that "a calumnious tweet can be more dangerous than a car bomb. The explosion of an armed vehicle may have a limited impact but a tweet loaded with lies can cause an ambient of conflict".

Source: Webguerrillero[es].

Occupied Taksim emphasizes how, while government repression has killed four people and injured, often very seriously, to at least 8000 people, the only thing the government seems concerned about is that cars have been burned or that publicity billboards have been broken. 

That is the "democratic" nature of Erdogan: he is extremely ugly and brutally arrogant but he does not seem to notice.

Turkey: 13 bloggers arrested, video of the shooting of Ethem Sarısülük

13 bloggers from Adana have been arrested for allegedly spreading subversive messages through Internet, in yet another clear case of Erdogan's dictatorial style in which free speech or even thought becomes a crime and democracy is reduced to a mere routine plebiscite.

These arrests add to the ones performed against dozens of online activists from Izmir days ago.

It has also surfaced now the video in which a riot police shoots with live fire injuring in Ethem Sarısülük, a worker from Ankara, whose death has been reported in the past but who seems to be still alive, according to his attorney Kazım Bayraktar.

All the shooting takes place in the first five seconds.

Bayraktar has repeatedly requested that the agent responsible for the shooting be identified but the authorities have simply ignored the demand. 

Source: Webguerrillero[es] (link 1, link 2).

USA: NSA spying your Internet activity

Uhm, yes, we all suspected it but now it seems demonstrated. The Gestapo-like National Security Agency (NSA) has been running for years a snooping program known as Prism that effectively allows them to control all Internet communications without any kind of judicial authorization or anything. 

The first company to join the program was... guess who? Microsoft, naturally. Then followed Yahoo!, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, YouTube, Skype, AOL and Apple. These companies give full access to the cops to snoop in your communications without any limitation nor guarantee. 

Sources and more details: Ex-SKF, The Guardian.

Turkey: 24 citizens arrested for twitting, 14 more 'wanted'

Erdogan compared to Hitler

24 citizens of Izmir have been arrested by police on charges of inciting to rebellion via Twitter. Police is trying to arrest 14 others still at large. 

The tweets appear to merely be a show of support for the protesters at the Gezi Park of Istanbul. An attorney of the main opposition party, the Kemalist CHP, has studied the cases and has not found anything that can be considered criminal in said tweets, which merely expressed opinions "that we all share".

It seems that the arrested were previously identified by police and are now being used as scapegoat. 

Source: Webguerrillero[es].

Turkish Revolution report (noon Jun 5)

Internet censorship (from Webguerrillero[es]):

Blockade of Twitter, Facebook is not direct but the broadband has been strangled (via TTNET, the Turkish ISP provider). That way access is not formally blocked but the flow of information has been reduced to a trickle, what is the same.

This also applies to access to the Internet overall via 3G. The main operator TurkCell denied they were choking the lines but the reality on the ground is very different. 

At least 120,000 people in the Turkish state has already downloaded an application known as HotSpot Shield that helps evade state censorship.

Also Kasama has a large photo-gallery (with a chronicle of the revolutionary uprising), as well as a report of the solidarity protests in Boston.

Searching for HKP references I found it to be a Kurdish Maoist party

Documentary: 'Naked citizens' (Orwell's dystopia today)

A quite interesting documentary (35 mins) on how police techno-surveillance in the Internet and the streets alike is destroying our right to privacy and threatening innocent people. It's not very different from Orwell's dystopic nightmare "1984", just a bit less blunt, but just a bit...

Found at Ah, Mephistophelis.

Spanish Inquisition to censor Basque youth site

The Spanish special political tribunal Audiencia Nacional (aka the Inquisition) has ordered today the closure of the website of Ernai (Basque independentist youth movement) on claim of "apology of terrorism" for its page on the Xabier López Peña[eu], ETA militant killed by prison and hospital neglect in Paris recently.

The page sends a warm embrace to the relatives of the deceased, denouncing the criminal prison policies of France and Spain as the murderers, demanding an urgent change in those prison policies, including the immediate repatriation of all Basque prisoners. It ends with a call for demonstrations in several localities for March 30 and the slogan: Struggle is the way! Farewell and respect, Xabier!

You tell me what in that is illegal. Well, probably all, even breathing is surely illegal for Basques these days... but, meh, seriously...

The real issue here is that Spain obviously wants to divert the attention from its own extremely dramatic socio-economic problems by re-creating the traditional Basque enemy by means of sustained and even increased repression. Threats against Basque politicians have been common in the last months. A real peace seems farther away than ever before but only because Spanish authorities, with full complicity of French ones, etc. want the war to begin again. 

Will they achieve it?

Source: Gara[eu].

Wikileaks launches a search engine for US diplomacy cables

Wikileaks is making easier for people to research the US cables with the tool PLUS D (Public Library of US Diplomacy), which allows World citizens to search and research the cablegate files in depth much more easily than before. 

For the Nixon era only, map and time charts are also available. They request donations/support to expand the library.

Example of Wikileaks' timegraph (click to expand)

Anonymous hacks Mossad and publishes list of 35,000 spies

As they say, the only safe computer is the unplugged one... and even then...

For what I could track online, hackers under the moniker Anonymous (and more specifically the Turkish group Red Hack and another cell called Sektor 404, according to Russia Today) have taken over the computers of the Zionist spy-terrorist organization Mossad and published them (a couple of multiple links right now floating over the internet: link 1, link 2 - they won't probably last for long but I guess they will be popping around for those really interested to find them as I just did). They also kicked the Zionist computers off the Net for some time:

Update (Apr 4): Kasama has today a documentary/propaganda video on Red Hack (in Turkish but English subtitles are available clicking in the options bar below).

Update (Apr 17): Ali Abuminah at Electronic Intifada claims it's all a hoax and that the data of innocent Palestinians is included in the list. Read more at Electronic Intifada. 

Important note: I posted yesterday a comment asking for further explanations, because, after all only one anonymous person is the source of Abuminah's hoax claim, while there are other good sources which do claim Red Hack as a real entity with a background, and it has not been published nor answered in any way, what makes me doubt of Abuminah's honesty a bit.