Following up on this morning’s post about Amazon, Wikileaks lasted there less than 24 hours. Amazon has stopped hosting their files, according to Joe Lieberman.
All I have to say is that I hope that fucker Bill Keller and all of his serious journalist buddies who have been tut-tutting about Wikileaks mark this day well, because it looks like the US government just pressured a big corporation to cut off a group that’s hosting essentially the same material that’s been printed in the New York Times. Keller might think he’s immune, but he’s also the customer of a big company that provides him Internet access, and perhaps one day Joe Lieberman might decide that his paper has “compromised our national security and put lives at risk around the world.”
Update: Here’s the official update from the traitor/rapist-in-chief:
Culture of Truth
Doesn’t keeping qualified gay soldiers out of the military hurt national security more?
Captain Haddock
I think you meant:
that fucker Bill Keller and all of his “serious journalist” buddies
or perhaps:
that fucker Bill Keller and all of his “serious” journalist buddies
or even:
that fucker Bill Keller and all of his serious “journalist” buddies
matoko_chan
Like i said, the only way the US gov can shut wikileaks down is by becoming China.
Do you always become what you most despise?
mikefromArlington
Most of the leaked crap is nothing as John Stewart pointed out. Only a bunch of immature babies couldn’t brush that stuff off and move on. So what if a few ego’s got shattered.
But, I do believe there was some serious damage done in the mid-east when numerous nations have now been outed in trying to encourage the U.S. to take out Iran. That’s some serious stuff right there and they are all now at risk and will be reluctant to be a strong partner in that region in the future for fear of future conversations being recorded.
matoko_chan
and…….this makes me wonder what else wikileaks has that the US gov is desperate to stop release of…. all this over garani?
Isnt all the dirt already dished?
video tapes of renditions in Somalia and Kenya (Assange mentioned that once i think)? more Iraqi Rape Squads? Afghan Rape Squads?
American soldiers torturing iraqis instead of iraqi soldiers torturing iraqis under our supervision?
could it be something worse?
what could be worse than what we have already seen?
bago
Restate suggests going full Nazi.
http://www.redstate.com/paul_j_cella/2010/12/01/disinviting-islam/
Check out section 2, policy prescriptions.
Pococurante
And Amazon delisted a how-to guide for pedophile only after months of pressure! Within just weeks of Interpol’s escalation?!
I’m not saying there’s a conspiracy. I’m just asking a question about the conspiracy… /beck
TooManyJens
I can’t help laughing at the idea of Joe “my server’s been hacked!” Lieberman giving updates on anyone’s web hosting.
matoko_chan
well at least now Burn can shop Amazon with a clear conscious.
sad for the skiddies though.
very few of them are bilingual. looks like the US will have to be spending $ to hire euro-skiddies too.
:)
Tom Levenson
Remember. Any sentence that contains the phrase “it couldn’t happen here” is wrong.
Brachiator
It’s on now! I will bet that some techies, who previously were sitting back or neutral, will now help to make sure that the Wikileaks servers are re-established.
And this issue now takes on international dimensions:
So it’s not just a US company, Amazon, but also touches on the sovereignty of other nations.
Some attention should also be paid to the international censorship related to Wikileaks. There have been reports that Saudi Arabia and Iran are throttling any discussion of the stories, that Iran is declaring reports about Saudi fears as deliberate American disinformation campaigns, and China is also shutting down any news about these stories.
mistermix
@Brachiator: I’m sure Wikileaks has a dozen more places to go. I wouldn’t be surprised if Assange picked Amazon just to further embarrass the US – mission accomplished, aided and abetted by Droopy Dog.
Joseph Nobles
@bago: Holy hell! Not only could it happen here, it is.
Calouste
@Brachiator:
Turkey, who feature prominently in the cables, although not in the reporting about them, have already explicitly suggested that Israel is behind the leaks with the purpose of isolating the Turkish government.
Come to think of it, 250,000 cables and so far none of them seem to have come from the embassy in Israel? Curious. Does all that traffic go over the actually secure network?
Omnes Omnibus
@Tom Levenson:
In that case, your sentence is wrong. Which also means that it is right…. Now, which brother is one on that always tells the truth? Or is that one the liar? I am confused.
Bobby Thomson
@mikefromArlington:
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
I’d say it’s a pretty nice improvement if Saudi Arabia stops with the Danny Ainge shit trying to instigate wars between other nations.
maus
@matoko_chan:
They don’t despise China, they despise Chinese people and China’s ability to silence dissent.
Bnut
@Bobby Thomson:
I doubt most will get it, but this has to be one of my favorite comments ever. Thanks.
Bostondreams
@bago:
Oh my god. These people are serious? I love how the First Amendment means nothing to these people, and indeed, advocate an amendment essentially declaring that Islam is not a religion. They encourage active discrimination, law breaking, and actual harrassment, not to mention a Counter-Enlightenment. And they pretend they are serious thinkers.
On a snarky note, I have seen a few comments there that maybe such prescriptions should be aimed at ALL religionists, so I am looking forward to the responses.
slag
@Omnes Omnibus: Wait a second. How is it right? I see how, based on its internal logic, the sentence is wrong. But I don’t see how it being wrong also makes it right. Draw it out for me please; I’m feeling dumber than usual today.
The Moar You Know
Freedom – too dangerous to be hosted in the United States.
This one act by Amazon says more about us as a nation than all our legislation ever could.
Land of the free, my ass.
Omnes Omnibus
@slag: If it is correct about such sentences being wrong, it is right… but then it is wrong… Arrgh.
ETA: I am running on fumes right now, so if I am wrong, I blame tiredness.
Brachiator
@mistermix:
No, I wasn’t looking at the embarrassment angle. I think, ironically, that Wikileaks was able to use Irish servers in part because, like google and other tech companies, there was a corporate advantage in doing so. It’s just a bit of irony, given Ireland’s current financial squeeze, that a remnant of their former Celtic Tiger expansion turned out to help Assange and his merry band.
@Calouste:
This perhaps underscores the difference between what is said for local consumption vs the real stuff that goes on.
But also here, I think that if some foreign governments (and not just Middle Eastern ones) were more “open” and “transparent,” people’s lives would be in jeopardy. And here is where I register some cautions about Assange’s efforts. There are places in the world were being open and truthful will get you seriously hurt.
Buddy Holllywood
Go Wikileaks! Go Assange! Don’t let the bastards get you down!
Bill Arnold
For whatever it’s worth, it doesn’t take much except a name, address, checking a box about agreement with a license agreement, and a credit card number to start deploying virtual machine instances on Amazon EC2. It’s pretty cheap, depending on what you want to deploy. (e.g. “$0.085 per Small Instance (m1.small) instance-hour (or partial hour)” is the cheapest) You can get VMs with GPUs as well if you happen to need teraflop (floating point) performance. I don’t know how to interpret the bandwidth pricing. Do we know for sure that Amazon even knew that one (or N) of their VMs was hosting Wikileaks?
Corner Stone
No big deal, just like when China banned Google..due to their..unrestricted..search….
Oh.
Roger Moore
@Tom Levenson:
I’m not sure about that. How about, “Rational, non-corrupt, non-racist conservatism: it couldn’t happen here”?
slag
@Omnes Omnibus: No. That helped. Now on to the lying brother problem…
Omnes Omnibus
@slag:You come to a fork in the road. One path leads to riches and happiness, the other, to death and destruction. Standing at the fork in the road there are two brothers, one always lies, and one who always tells the truth. You dont know which brother tells the truth, and which lies. If you could ask only one question, and you have to be sure you are on the right path before you start down the path. What question do you ask the brothers?
Roger Moore
@Omnes Omnibus:
“Which path would your brother say leads to riches and happiness?” Then take the other road.
Jay B.
From Salon:
According to accounts the women gave to the police and friends, they each had consensual sexual encounters with Mr. Assange that became nonconsensual. One woman said that Mr. Assange had ignored her appeals to stop after a condom broke. The other woman said that she and Mr. Assange had begun a sexual encounter using a condom, but that Mr. Assange did not comply with her appeals to stop when it was no longer in use. Mr. Assange has questioned the veracity of those accounts.
Moral: We should sic Interpol on every single frat house in this country, just to be safe.*
*NOT dismissing the accusations. No means no. Questioning every other hysterical reaction to it. But yeah, I’m sure there’s nothing more than simple “rule of law” and “due process” issues involved.
Maude
@Pococurante:
The book sold one copy. The book was taken off quickly.
It wasn’t clear if the writer removed it or Amazon did.
It was not on there for months. A lot of people called Amazon and the comments were furious about the book being there.
Eric Holder said that he understood the difference between the press and wikileaks. Rightie radio was not happy with him.
Lieberman is for the repeal of DADT.
matoko_chan
well…..i think it is AMAZING.
and all the pearlclutchers and lip pursers like sooner and eemom are like people putting up drapes in a house that has been half gutted by fire.
“nothing to see here”
its Neuromancer and Serenity and Snowcrash!
This is for Sooner– why Assange is doing this.
Assange:
the whole thing is fascinating.
ossification by paranoia.
matoko_chan
Brady on Assange from the link.
wow. just wow. i think im in love. information theory meets SBH.
im going to fuse this with quellism for the ultimate third culture philosophy.
yes JGabriel, ima borrower.
and this theory is being tested!
rickstersherpa
One of the problems with Obama adopting so much of the Bush agenda and covering up for their war crimes is that it has pushed the right to be even more extreme to demonstrate how much “tougher” they are and willing to go to the mat for us “Murikans.” Hence, we have a former Speaker of the U.S. House advocating we murder/assassinate Assange as well as the incoming chair of the house judicary committee, Peter King (who knows something about associating with thugs and terrorists as his close friend Jerry Adams could tell you). Whatever his fault, Assange has most certainly never taken up arms or committed any act of war against the U.S. If he has committed a crime, indict him, issue an arrest warrant, and then ask what ever country he is in to extradite him so he can have a trial. You know, that whole “due process thing” that we fought the American Revolution for in ’76.
Peter J
They Hate Us For Our Freedom!(tm)(r)
slag
@Omnes Omnibus: You’re right. That is confusing. I’ve heard variations on that theme but have never given them much thought.
Bill Arnold
@matoko_chan:
That interpretive piece (that you linked, though I saw it at digby’s) on Assange by zunguzungu is an interesting read.
Frankly it sounds pretty much like information-age anarchism. (Which I have little interest in and have not studied.)
I don’t know of any existence proof of a large, completely transparent organization of humans.
Jay B.
@Bill Arnold:
I have no idea what “information-age anarchism” means. To me, it sounds like “open source information” that helps a security state devour itself or cease to exist. To me, it’s the extension of Jefferson’s take on the best kind of democratic system:
Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.
We haven’t been well-informed for decades, if ever.
salacious crumb
you are wrong mistermix. As long as NYT puts Israel in good light, they will be in good books of Joe Lieberman and the 99% of the dickish Congress. NYT has nothing to fear.
Bill Arnold
@matoko_chan:
A little shrinkage is/was certainly indicated. The leaker (if they were low-level like manning) should not have been able to (1) easily and quickly download 260000 documents and (2) should not have been able to copy them easily to a removable media device, and remove it. I mean, what was the idea? That any of the hundreds of thousands of people with access might have a need to download everything so that they could do some novel data mining analysis on it during lunch break?
There are quick fixes here that are similar in simplicity to e.g. locking cockpit doors on commercial passenger aircraft.
Bill Arnold
@Jay B.:
Sure, I meant anarchist tactics adapted to disruption of the electronic communications of large organizations.
Assange 2006:
Jay in Oregon
@Roger Moore:
Or you do what this guy did starting at 3:25…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i99jMtnE4vw
Pococurante
@Maude: Pardon me madame, but you’ve tread on my snark.