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You are here: Home / Triumph of the Manly Men

Triumph of the Manly Men

by $8 blue check mistermix|  December 1, 20103:03 pm| 44 Comments

This post is in: Our Failed Media Experiment

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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:

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Reader Interactions

44Comments

  1. 1.

    Culture of Truth

    December 1, 2010 at 3:08 pm

    Doesn’t keeping qualified gay soldiers out of the military hurt national security more?

  2. 2.

    Captain Haddock

    December 1, 2010 at 3:08 pm

    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

  3. 3.

    matoko_chan

    December 1, 2010 at 3:09 pm

    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?

  4. 4.

    mikefromArlington

    December 1, 2010 at 3:12 pm

    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.

  5. 5.

    matoko_chan

    December 1, 2010 at 3:16 pm

    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?

  6. 6.

    bago

    December 1, 2010 at 3:19 pm

    Restate suggests going full Nazi.
    http://www.redstate.com/paul_j_cella/2010/12/01/disinviting-islam/

    Check out section 2, policy prescriptions.

  7. 7.

    Pococurante

    December 1, 2010 at 3:20 pm

    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

  8. 8.

    TooManyJens

    December 1, 2010 at 3:22 pm

    Amazon has stopped hosting their files, according to Joe Lieberman.

    I can’t help laughing at the idea of Joe “my server’s been hacked!” Lieberman giving updates on anyone’s web hosting.

  9. 9.

    matoko_chan

    December 1, 2010 at 3:22 pm

    our $ are now spent to employ people in europe.

    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.
    :)

  10. 10.

    Tom Levenson

    December 1, 2010 at 3:22 pm

    Remember. Any sentence that contains the phrase “it couldn’t happen here” is wrong.

  11. 11.

    Brachiator

    December 1, 2010 at 3:31 pm

    Following up on this morning’s post about Amazon, Wikileaks lasted there less than 24 hours.

    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:

    After several denial of service (DOS) attacks hit it over the weekend, WikiLeaks is now being hosted by Amazon servers in the U.S. and Ireland, IP traces conducted today show….
    __
    “WikiLeaks changed its hosting two times in the last 12 hours,” said Hypponen in an interview Monday. “[WikiLeaks] changed from the French host that it’s used for some time to Amazon’s cloud … and one of those IP adresses is in the US”

    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.

  12. 12.

    mistermix

    December 1, 2010 at 3:39 pm

    @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.

  13. 13.

    Joseph Nobles

    December 1, 2010 at 3:42 pm

    @bago: Holy hell! Not only could it happen here, it is.

  14. 14.

    Calouste

    December 1, 2010 at 3:44 pm

    @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?

  15. 15.

    Omnes Omnibus

    December 1, 2010 at 3:47 pm

    @Tom Levenson:

    Any sentence that contains the phrase “it couldn’t happen here” is wrong.

    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.

  16. 16.

    Bobby Thomson

    December 1, 2010 at 3:59 pm

    @mikefromArlington:

    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.

    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.

  17. 17.

    maus

    December 1, 2010 at 3:59 pm

    @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?

    They don’t despise China, they despise Chinese people and China’s ability to silence dissent.

  18. 18.

    Bnut

    December 1, 2010 at 4:17 pm

    @Bobby Thomson:

    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

    I doubt most will get it, but this has to be one of my favorite comments ever. Thanks.

  19. 19.

    Bostondreams

    December 1, 2010 at 4:17 pm

    @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.

  20. 20.

    slag

    December 1, 2010 at 4:25 pm

    @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.

  21. 21.

    The Moar You Know

    December 1, 2010 at 4:32 pm

    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.

  22. 22.

    Omnes Omnibus

    December 1, 2010 at 4:35 pm

    @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.

  23. 23.

    Brachiator

    December 1, 2010 at 4:39 pm

    @mistermix:

    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.

    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:

    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.

    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.

  24. 24.

    Buddy Holllywood

    December 1, 2010 at 4:40 pm

    Go Wikileaks! Go Assange! Don’t let the bastards get you down!

  25. 25.

    Bill Arnold

    December 1, 2010 at 4:43 pm

    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?

  26. 26.

    Corner Stone

    December 1, 2010 at 4:43 pm

    No big deal, just like when China banned Google..due to their..unrestricted..search….
    Oh.

  27. 27.

    Roger Moore

    December 1, 2010 at 4:46 pm

    @Tom Levenson:

    Any sentence that contains the phrase “it couldn’t happen here” is wrong.

    I’m not sure about that. How about, “Rational, non-corrupt, non-racist conservatism: it couldn’t happen here”?

  28. 28.

    slag

    December 1, 2010 at 4:47 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus: No. That helped. Now on to the lying brother problem…

  29. 29.

    Omnes Omnibus

    December 1, 2010 at 4:51 pm

    @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?

  30. 30.

    Roger Moore

    December 1, 2010 at 4:55 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus:
    “Which path would your brother say leads to riches and happiness?” Then take the other road.

  31. 31.

    Jay B.

    December 1, 2010 at 5:03 pm

    From Salon:

    Finally, while it sometimes gets lost in the coverage, the Times today has a concise explanation of the accusations against Assange:

    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.

    That Sweden has turned to Interpol and a Red Notice to pursue Assange over these charges — and at this tense moment — is remarkable. A quick look through Interpol’s press release archives shows the use of Red Notices against those suspected of genocide, war crimes and terrorism.

    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.

  32. 32.

    Maude

    December 1, 2010 at 5:03 pm

    @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.

  33. 33.

    matoko_chan

    December 1, 2010 at 5:09 pm

    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!

    WikiLeaks is the first global Samizdat movement. The truth will surface even in the face of total annihilation.
    39 minutes ago via web

    This is for Sooner– why Assange is doing this.
    Assange:

    “To radically shift regime behavior we must think clearly and boldly for if we have learned anything, it is that regimes do not want to be changed. We must think beyond those who have gone before us, and discover technological changes that embolden us with ways to act in which our forebears could not. Firstly we must understand what aspect of government or neocorporatist behavior we wish to change or remove. Secondly we must develop a way of thinking about this behavior that is strong enough carry us through the mire of politically distorted language, and into a position of clarity. Finally must use these insights to inspire within us and others a course of ennobling, and effective action.”
    Julian Assange, “State and Terrorist Conspiracies”

    the whole thing is fascinating.

    [T]he point is not that particular leaks are specifically effective. Wikileaks does not leak something like the “Collateral Murder” video as a way of putting an end to that particular military tactic; that would be to target a specific leg of the hydra even as it grows two more. Instead, the idea is that increasing the porousness of the conspiracy’s information system will impede its functioning, that the conspiracy will turn against itself in self-defense, clamping down on its own information flows in ways that will then impede its own cognitive function. You destroy the conspiracy, in other words, by making it so paranoid of itself that it can no longer conspire.

    ossification by paranoia.

  34. 34.

    matoko_chan

    December 1, 2010 at 5:16 pm

    Brady on Assange from the link.

    The leak, in other words, is only the catalyst for the desired counter-overreaction; Wikileaks wants to provoke the conspiracy into turning off its own brain in response to the threat. As it tries to plug its own holes and find the leakers, he reasons, its component elements will de-synchronize from and turn against each other, de-link from the central processing network, and come undone. Even if all the elements of the conspiracy still exist, in this sense, depriving themselves of a vigorous flow of information to connect them all together as a conspiracy prevents them from acting as a conspiracy. …In this sense, most of the media commentary on the latest round of leaks has totally missed the point. After all, why are diplomatic cables being leaked? These leaks are not specifically about the war(s) at all, and most seem to simply be a broad swath of the everyday normal secrets that a security state keeps from all but its most trusted hundreds of thousands of people who have the right clearance. Which is the point: Assange is completely right that our government has conspiratorial functions. What else would you call the fact that a small percentage of our governing class governs and acts in our name according to information which is freely shared amongst them but which cannot be shared amongst their constituency? And we all probably knew that this was more or less the case; anyone who was surprised that our embassies are doing dirty, secretive, and disingenuous political work as a matter of course is naïve. But Assange is not trying to produce a journalistic scandal which will then provoke red-faced government reforms or something, precisely because no one is all that scandalized by such things any more. Instead, he is trying to strangle the links that make the conspiracy possible, to expose the necessary porousness of the American state’s conspiratorial network in hopes that the security state will then try to shrink its computational network in response, thereby making itself dumber and slower and smaller.

    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!

  35. 35.

    rickstersherpa

    December 1, 2010 at 5:25 pm

    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.

  36. 36.

    Peter J

    December 1, 2010 at 5:29 pm

    They Hate Us For Our Freedom!(tm)(r)

  37. 37.

    slag

    December 1, 2010 at 6:11 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus: You’re right. That is confusing. I’ve heard variations on that theme but have never given them much thought.

  38. 38.

    Bill Arnold

    December 1, 2010 at 6:20 pm

    @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.

  39. 39.

    Jay B.

    December 1, 2010 at 6:30 pm

    @Bill Arnold:

    Frankly it sounds pretty much like information-age anarchism. (Which I have little interest in and have not studied.)

    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.

  40. 40.

    salacious crumb

    December 1, 2010 at 6:32 pm

    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.

  41. 41.

    Bill Arnold

    December 1, 2010 at 6:34 pm

    @matoko_chan:

    …to expose the necessary porousness of the American states conspiratorial network in hopes that the security state will then try to shrink its computational network in response, thereby making itself dumber and slower and smaller.

    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.

  42. 42.

    Bill Arnold

    December 1, 2010 at 6:49 pm

    @Jay B.:
    Sure, I meant anarchist tactics adapted to disruption of the electronic communications of large organizations.
    Assange 2006:

    Attacks on conspiratorial cognitive ability
    A man in chains knows he should have acted sooner for his ability to influence
    the actions of the state is near its end. To deal with powerful conspiratorial
    actions we must think ahead and attack the process that leads to them since
    the actions themselves can not be dealt with.
    We can deceive or blind a conspiracy by distorting or restricting the information
    available to it.
    We can reduce total conspiratorial power via unstructured attacks on links
    or through throttling and separating.
    A conspiracy sufficiently engaged in this manner is no longer able to comprehend
    its environment and plan robust action.

  43. 43.

    Jay in Oregon

    December 1, 2010 at 10:54 pm

    @Roger Moore:

    Or you do what this guy did starting at 3:25…

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i99jMtnE4vw

  44. 44.

    Pococurante

    December 2, 2010 at 8:11 am

    @Maude: Pardon me madame, but you’ve tread on my snark.

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