Lulz Security and Arizona's new race laws

I love these kids, and I am certain they're sincere. Unlike most of my own generally worthless generation, enough of them give a shit not to cancel them out like us generation x-ers have done to ourselves, in our pathetic, jaded narcissism.

But enough about people I used to hang out with in college (not you, Chris!)...

Polls show that most Americans are taking the reactionary route with online activism--groups like LulzSec and Wikileaks. They don't get that--like it or not--there aren't going to be too many secrets in the future among the powerful. Scoundrels of every stripe are running scared right now and doing the predictable overreacting, going so far as to pass laws that enact police state policies. These are the dumbest reactions imaginable since it's not going to work, technology is Pandora's Box, you can't close it.

That's what bullies do. The problem they face is that people are beginning to tire of their bullshit, their lies, and their secrecy (really an excuse to hide criminal activity a good portion of the time) at everyone's expense.

Now, people are beginning to push back, and that scares the crap out of the people with the power, the people who have been abusing it since day one. This is coming to a real watershed moment where people are going to get hurt, but that's how human history works, it never ends, and eventually there will be no sidelines to park one's ass on, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, no rationalizations that are going to float anymore.

LulzSec have now hacked the main computers of the Arizona State Police in order to derail that state's obviously racist and unconstitutional anti-immigrant laws that will allow racial profiling. Arizona already has a bad reputation with race going back to its earliest settlement after the Mexican-American War and the law is political pandering and strategy by the Republican Party since most Hispanics (and blacks) don't vote for them historically.

Add to that a moronic segment of the population of the state that has played into their hands and pushed their agenda.

Businesses that employ "illegales" also stand to keep benefiting from a continuation of the status quo (with some ramping-up for show) where they can continue to blackmail illegal immigrants into working for even lower wages for what can only be described as the conditions of peonage. But really, the racist cops also get to take out their bad childhoods on Mexicans, they get a blank-check to profile and target them for legal harassment, no probable cause necessary.

So, today, and I really mean it, a little "fuck you" to Arizona law enforcement who have the same fixation they do in Maricopa County with brown people:

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/6490796/Chinga_La_Migra

What's been going on?

I'd write, "Not a lot," but it would be untrue.

Work continues on revising and editing on the DC Madam account--no rush jobs here, I'm hoping at the end of it all that what the reader will have is a fair and accurate accounting of my experiences in the DC Madam scandal. Right now, the manuscript is clocking in at 527 pages, but should be trimmed to one hundred less (plus and index, a rarity these days in non-fiction books).

There will be a hard-copy edition first. Plans on who will be publishing have yet to be decided, but this will be self-published regardless, my own imprint. I'm hoping to keep things down in size and length so that it's an affordable trade paper with a slick cover. A cover design has already been finalized and will relate directly to the case itself. There will be no other photographs beyond that.

Other news: I've recently had surgery for an inguinal hernia, a bad one. This has taken me off of my work on the book for a time, but it's recommenced. The hernia actually began one week after Jeane contacted me to cover her story, do research, and put up with her shit (I wouldn't do the final one) and has plagued me now for several years, but it's thankfully over. Don't let anybody kid you, they're awful...

Also, the hernia impacted any possibility of much posting on here, besides the usual lack of support that most bloggers know all too well. So, if you wonder why I don't post much it's because I'm not being given a reason to.

Release date for the DC Madam account: This is up in the air. All work is being done by the author, so it's time consuming to say the least. But expect a release of no later than early 2012, possibly sooner.

Publishers & Agents: I don't need you or want you, something I've made crystal clear in the past. There are things like Lulu now, they pay an 80/20-split (80% for the author, top that), get the books to buyers within a mere few days, and the quality is very good. I'm not some goggle-eyed kid who's naive enough to think I'm going to get a "good deal," an author needs a lawyer and a machine-gun to get paid by the big houses.

That's it.

An interesting analog in the age of digital hacking

Ed.--A recent spate of cyberattacks on Google's Gmail system (originating in China) reminded me of a some similar techniques employed against Deborah Jeane Palfrey (the DC Madam), perhaps by the United States Government or non-governmental actors--contractors of one variety or another. The Chinese attacks ensnared several hundred individuals, some of them high level American government officials, presumably some working for the State Department.

Some whose Gmail accounts were breached were American military personnel as well as a few Chinese dissidents, perhaps included as a diversion or as overlap from other hacking operations originating from the same actors. Whoever they were, they were looking for specific types of people doing specific types of work for the U.S. Government; specific individuals were targeted for hacking.

Do no evil?

Google routinely cooperates with the America national security state, so it's no surprise that they've been targeted by other nations using third party actors to provide a kind of plausible deniability. In the case of the recent attack on Google, it's safe to assume that the encouragement of non-governmental actors was formulated to prevent accountability being directed at the regime in Beijing, a fair assumption. Does the U.S. do this? Certainly--one could argue that we pioneered its use--and some of this echoes the very real world attacks on American soil on September 11, 2001, ushering in a newer form of mercenary where attacks by one state against another are done indirectly by proxy, "non-governmental" agents.

21st Century Brigands?

This is perhaps going to be the Golden Age of the mercenary, with further tech-enhancements.

Mercenary hackers aren't new, but the scale of their activities is growing rapidly. Information warfare itself is an old tactic of political entities, and nation states like the United States or even Turkey are engaged in it all of the time.

...Google said Wednesday that personal Gmail accounts of several hundred people, including senior U.S. government officials, military personnel and political activists, had been exposed. Google traced the origin of the attacks to Jinan, China, the home city of a military vocational school whose computers were linked to a more sophisticated assault 17 months ago on Google's systems." ... ("US says no... ," AP, June 2, 2011)

Most modern nation states are engaging in it at some stage, but like the use of drones in recent conflicts, it remains unofficial policy, often mislabeled as "conspiracy." Cyberwarfare isn't new, but the widening scope of its use by state and "rogue" (using the term without any value judgment) actors is.

The Palfrey defense was under surveillance, period, it's inarguable and I bore witness to it directly. Some will say that it was for legitimate purposes of the enforcement of the law, but how then would any defendant get a fair trial under such scrutiny? What's arguable is who it might have been which one could speculate on endlessly with such a muddied trail. That's how it goes with hacking and cyberattacks, but with enough persistence and even some luck the origins of a hit can sometimes be uncovered. The key is to erase as much of a trail leading to the originator of the attack as possible and it's not rocket science, but not so prevalent or as easy in the stone age days of the Internent back in the fall of 1998 when the madam's account was hacked.

Even at the time what they did wasn't especially sophisticated, but the average Internet user wouldn't have known how to do the breach and what followed from it.

Just shy of ten years later I had a productive exchange with a former attorney of the DC Madam's about the breaching of the her email account:

Jeane and I searched and searched and finally traced the insertion of a email forwarding address in her earthlink account to a Yahoo.uk email address. When I took it up with yahoo.uk, they had no answer how anyone had hacked into Jeane's account and could not identify the owner of the yahoo.uk email account as it was to a string of fictious email accounts. (Correspondence with the Editor, August 2008)

This was to be expected whether it was a state actor or not. It's a very good possibility that this was a former client of Pamela Martin & Associates, but that could just as well mean the arrow points to the state as well as contractors.

What raised a few flags this week for me came from this passage in an AP article on the recent breaches in Google's Gmail infrastructure that compromised some of the personal email accounts of a few high level American officials.

The modus operandi is similar if not identical to the breaches in the DC Madam's Sprynet email account back in 1998:

...While Google said last year's attack was aimed at its corporate infrastructure, the latest incident appears to have relied on tricking email users into revealing passwords, based on Google's description in its blog post.

It said the perpetrators changed the victims' email forwarding settings, presumably secretly sending the victims' personal emails to other recipients. ... ("Google reveals... ," Reuters, June 2, 2011 )

The final sentence is exactly what happened to the DC Madam's email account sometime in October 1998.

It's almost become a cliche that intelligence agencies (and similar institutions and groups) can and have used primitive forms of hacking as a cover for the activities against various actionable targets. Perhaps one day we'll find through declassifications that a government contractor created all of those phony email accounts when Palfrey began to become a "person of interest" to whoever hacked her account and changed her forwarding settings, intercepting all of her emails going in and out (I know from experience as I was receiving bouncebacks once the phony account had been closed). Most likely, she was beginning to become a liability to a privileged former client...but the truth of the case is elusive as ever.

"US says no official email hacked; FBI on case," AP, June 2, 2011): http://enews.earthlink.net/article/top?guid=20110602/39b5ae26-4471-4ea8-b6c5-afbde96ef979

"Google reveals Gmail hacking, says likely from China," Reuters, June 2, 2011: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/us_google

Comments word salad

Not claiming to have reinvented the wheel here (cut-ups), but these made a good polyglot that makes more sense than most of the news these days. If Donald Rumsfeld can do it, so can I:

"I love smoking weed and shit, but cowards never do: I've only smoked Mr. Smiley twice--the first time was fucking insane, I got retarded high off like 3 hits of a blunt from behind a whorehouse two-way mirror. By the way, he fucks good when there were tears at the Kenyan Embassy.

Bin Laden's death could inspire new attacks, so I saved the rest, then I got home from work and smoked what was left. He wants to have two women at a time like porn stars but I can't shit you: it's like I was tripping acid, yo. I started hearing voices and started hallucinating.

A guy said, 'Mark Byers, stop hideing behind the bible and be a man' but people it was awesome. I would rather love to smoke weed and proclaim: 'Own up to what you did, Mr Smiley, because he is the same Jack [Burkman] in 2011.' "

And so, with a little tweaking, three comments become a cause for my personal safety. Tah!

Once again, a shameless plug for my musical project

http://www.myspace.com/smolensk

A very curious spam...

Ed.--You wouldn't believe some of the crazy emails and comments I get from operating this blog. Today, I got this in my email box as a comment, and in Cyrillic (Google translator did the rest):

Ladies and Gentlemen [This must, in fact, be Yakov Smirnoff].

If you are interested in a little politics, you must have noticed - this sudden unrest in Africa
has an ulterior motive.

There are 2 versions of these events - the "official" and "informal," and both versions are probably far from actual facts:

[B] Version 1: [/ b] Gaddafi - a tyrant and autocrat, shot at civilians, so it should be removed.
[B] Version 2: [/ b] in fact Europe and America wanted a little Libyan oil, and they decided to put on a small "riot"

Consider Version 1.

Yes, Qaddafi has one more old man, he of course it would be time and retired. But did you know that specifically in Libya people have a very high preference under his rule? Teachers receive a $ 3,000, paid the unemployed about $ 1,000 and so on. Yes, he was tame small group of rebellious Bedouins, but does anyone understand the real causes of these riots? This version does not hold water.

Version 2.

Oil Libya? Yes, it is of high quality, Libyan oil is very clean. But she was not so much.
And besides, why would haunt Egypt and other African nations, which the whole of last
year in general no one disturbed and worried? And then suddenly they're "tyrants," "Monsters", etc.

Yes, this situation is further fueled the price of oil. Individual corporations are profitable.

But the truth is shorter.

Gaddafi is not so long ago began to combine Middle Eastern country under the idea to move to the calculation for oil and products are not dollars, not euros, and an alternative to all this. And Egypt - one of the countries which it supported ...

Read more here:

http://sterligov.livejournal.com/4389.html

However, in the popular media, it will never say.

PS: Saddam Hussein, incidentally, also had such undertakings. Generally, after the crisis, sooo many the country began to think about getting rid of reliance on the U.S.. Sooner or later
it happens. The Fed has no place to lower rates.

Spread it where you can. People need to know the truth.


By the way, is also on the topic: The military operation in western Libya, Libya, France suffered an invasion of Libya in the day, destruction, France has promised to attack Libya after a few hours, against France has promised to attack Libya after several hours, killed ...

Hey, it takes all kinds. Whoever wrote it must know English as well. Anyway, some of the observations strike me as true though it would be a stretch to call Gadaffi's regime just or even reasonable.

What did they post this comment on? An observation I made from 2006 on Mark Foley and the GOP being a gaggle of sexual perverts, which is true. Moose and squirrel...

The Lay of the Land: Libya, Ivory Coast, Mexico, US

US OIL: $108/BARREL

EU & WORLD OIL: $120/BARREL

US/MEXICO BORDER

ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS DRESSED IN U.S. MARINE CORPS UNIFORMS IN U.S. GOVERNMENT VEHICLES

(2 X PICTURES)

LIBYA

3RD APRIL: +/- 60 NATO (UK & FRANCE) AIRSTRIKES AGAINST QADAFFI MILITARY

2ND APRIL: +/- 70 NATO (UK & FRANCE) AIRSTRIKES AGAINST QADAFFI MILITARY

IVORY COAST (AFRICA)

FORMER PRESIDENT GBAGBO REFUSAL TO ACCEPT ELECTED PRESIDENT OUATTARA

FRANCE MILITARY SIEZURE OF ABIDJAN AIRPORT (largest city)

UNITED NATIONS IMMINENT AIR STRIKES AGAINST IVORY COAST MILITARY

+/- 9,000 UN MILITARY PERSONNEL (OPERATION COTE D'IVOIRE)

+/- 1,500 FRENCH MILITARY PERSONNEL (OPERATION LICORNE)

UN IVORY COAST COMMANDER YOUNG-JIN (SOUTH KOREA)

UN SECRETARY GENERAL (NEW YORK): BAN KI-MOON (SOUTH KOREA)

LIBERIA MILITARY PERSONNEL JOINING IVORY COAST MILITARY

+/- 1,000 KIA

Three Fates

The First Sister said: "Come unto me, and I will give you rest."

The Second Sister said: "I will rend your life and your soul."

The Third Sister said: "I am the way out," and I took that door, in sorrow.

The Lay of the Land: Libya, Korea, Israel, Japan

US OIL $106/BARREL

EU/WORLD OIL $116/BARREL

LIBYA

US/NATO NAVAL BLOCKADE INITIATED (INCLUDING TURKISH NAVAL FORCES)

US/NATO NO FLY ZONE & COUNTERSTRIKE AGAINST LIBYA MILITARY EXPANDED

FRENCH AIRCRAFT CARRIER CHARLES DE GAULLE

USS KEARSARGE CARRIER EXPEDITIONARY STRIKE GROUP///26TH MARINE EXPEDITIONARY UNIT
B-2 STEALTH BOMBERS

UKSAS & US SPECIAL OPERATIONS
AIRCRASH: 1 X US F15 FIGHTER JET (2 X PILOTS EXTRACTED BY USMC 26TH MEU)

JAPAN

TOKYO: RADIATION CONTAMINATION

EUROPE: LOW RADIATION ARRIVAL

FUKUSHIMA REACTORS:

ONE: EXPLOSION/LOW RADIATION///TWO: EXPLOSION/LOW RADIATION
THREE: EXPLOSION/LOW RADIATION - ACTIVE SMOKE/EVACUATION
FOUR: DOUBLE EXPLOSION/LOW RADIATION
FIVE: STABLE///SIX: STABLE
USS WASHINGTON CARRIER STRIKE GROUP
USS ESSEX CARRIER EXPEDITIONARY STRIKE GROUP///31ST MARINE EXPEDITIONARY UNIT

ISRAEL

HAMAS EMPLACED 1 X IED ADJACENT JERUSALEM CONVENTION CENTER (1 X KIA, 30 X WIA)

GAZA LAUNCH OF GRAD (IRANIAN MADE) ROCKETS INTO 2 X BEERSHEBA, 1 X ASHDOD AND 1 X ASHKELON (5 X WIA)

GAZA LAUNCH OF MORTARS INTO 7 X ESHKOL KIBBUTZ FARMS AND 3 X SHAAR KIBBUTZ FARMS

KOREA/PERSIAN GULF

USS LINCOLN CARRIER STRIKE GROUP (KOREA)
USS ENTERPRISE CARRIER STRIKE GROUP ENROUTE (PERSIAN GULF)
USS VINSON CARRIER STRIKE GROUP (PERSIAN GULF)
USS BOXER EXPEDITIONARY CARRIER STRIKE GROUP (PERSIAN GULF)

The Lay of the Land: Libya, Korea, Afghanistan, Israel, Japan

LIBYA

MILITARY:

PERSONNEL - 120,000ACTIVE///200,000RESERVE, OTHER

AIR - SCUD MRBM, MIG25, SUKHOI, MIRAGE, S200, IGLA, STRELA, OTHER

LAND - T72, MLRS, SA9, SA13, OTHER

SEA - SUMARINES (FOXTROT CLASS), MISSILE FRIGATES (SS-N-2C)

========================

LIBYA

US FORCES:

B-2 STEALTH BOMBERS

KEARSARGE EXPEDITIONARY STRIKE GROUP///26TH MARINE EXPEDITIONARY UNIT

US SPECIAL OPERATIONS

(EN-ROUTE) BATAAN EXPEDITIONARY STRIKE GROUP

(EN-ROUTE) ENTERPRISE CARRIER STRIKE GROUP

[[[STIKE GROUPS COMPOSED OF MULTIPLE WARSHIPS, ATTACK SUBMARINES & FIGHTER AIRCRAFT]]]

JAPAN

REAGAN CARRIER STRIKE GROUP

WASHINGTON CARRIER STRIKE GROUP

ESSEX EXPEDITIONARY STRIKE GROUP///31ST MARINE EXPEDITIONARY UNIT

FUKUSHIMA REACTORS:

ONE: EXPLOSION/LOW RADIATION

TWO: EXPLOSION/LOW RADIATION

THREE: EXPLOSION/LOW RADIATION (SECOND EXPLOSION IMMINENT)

FOUR: DOUBLE EXPLOSION/LOW RADIATION

FIVE: STABLE

SIX: STABLE

TOKYO: LOW RADIATION ARRIVAL

KOREA/AFGHANISTAN

LINCOLN CARRIER STRIKE GROUP (KOREA)

VINSON CARRIER STRIKE GROUP (AFGHANISTAN)

BOXER EXPEDITIONARY STRIKE GROUP (AFGHANISTAN)

ISRAEL

(SATURDAY) 50 X MORTARS/ROCKETS FIRED FROM GAZA (HAMAS) INTO ISRAEL IN LESS THAN 15 MINUES

(THURSDAY) EGYPT MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD MEETING WITH HAMAS

Make yourself...

...heard, not herd.

The inherent clean energy opportunity in Japan

This is not meant as any kind of a cynical-jab at the Japanese people, looking at them as some tool for change. The earthquake and subsequent nuclear accidents that are unfolding are a horrific reminder of how tenuous modern life is: in a matter of just five minutes, everything on the Japanese mainland changed forever.

At this point, we have no idea how many people have died or will die as a result of what's been reported as an 8.4 to 8.9 scale earthquake, possibly the worst in their entire recorded history.

The most recent one on roughly the same scale occurred in 1923, killing as many as 140,000 people. But the Japanese were better prepared for a recurrence...except that you can never truly prepare for one when it comes to a nuclear power plant. Nuclear power will always be vulnerable to natural disasters, social upheavals, and most certainly, inevitable social collapse since all civilizations end one day.

The half-lives of most radioactive byproducts of nuclear power will far-exceed the lifespan of any civilization, reason enough to begin a general decommissioning of all existing plants, the neutralization of the waste ("byproducts," and to the best of our abilities), and a rapid conversion over to a constellation of clean or cleaner energy sources, mainly natural and renewable ones. This nuclear disaster hasn't even played-out yet, but I see very real opportunities that need to be grasped, and immediately, by the Japanese public as well as the world community, outside of the corridors of power.

As the Japanese people and their rescuers from their government and from around the world are exposed to radioactive contamination, we need to realize that we have yet another opening here: the outrage that's inevitably coming on the mainland--perhaps even from neighboring countries--is going to be profound. As always, there are cultural, and therefore, historical reasons for this.

For those with a short memory, it should be remembered that the Japanese are the only nation on earth to have atomic weapons directed upon them. They have not forgotten this by a long-shot, and the terrible irony of this catastrophe-upon-a-catastrophe will not be lost on them as it surely is on most Americans, willfully, since we're the ones who dropped two atomic bombs on them in 1945.

We tend to forget about our own war crimes here in the United States, our victims however, do not.

There will be a very loud cry indeed in Japan to decommission these nuclear plants because they have failed every test. The plants themselves were already strongly opposed, but as it usually happens, times were better and they public will was more neutral and the opposition's warnings were ignored. There was, after all, a lot of money to be made, and power demands were growing and still are. That's fine and well, but events have a way of changing things, and catastrophes borne out of both natural disaster and human incompetence and corruption lead to a perception of misrule. As often is the case, that perception is usually accurate.

Prediction: there will be a major groundswell coming against further development and operation of nuclear power on the Japanese mainland. A call for major, wide-scale investment in clean and renewable sources of energy will be heard throughout the island nation. If it reaches the level of mass-production, it will have a global impact since Japan is the third largest developed economy in the world, one of the world's skilled "workshops," like Germany.

Even with this disaster, Japan could be poised to lead the way towards a new and decisive direction, towards the real world implementation of alternative energy sources that are well outside of the box. With China in close-proximity, production in both nations could point to very affordable solar technologies, as just one example.

This is all a wait-and-see, to be sure, since we don't know how bad this nuclear disaster is going get. But I think there are great opportunities here for Japan and the world, coming out of their worst period since WWII, their (and our) greatest challenge. As fate would have it, Wikileaks has uncovered and released one of the cache of American State Department cables, and they purport to contain a passage of Japanese government officials discussing cover-ups of previous nuclear accidents. When-and-if the smokes clears soon, the Japanese people will learn of this; there will be a wide demand for explanations, with the predictable outrage, perhaps even riots.

All we lack is the will since an outraged citizenry that won't have it anymore is an irresistible social force that cannot be held back any longer.

He Jerks Hard for the Phonies

"I work hard!" he told a room of openly uninterested listeners, something he did a lot of the time, especially after he left work at his private firm, his minuscule fiefdom. OK: especially at work, since his employees never listened to what he had to say because they were immune to bullshit. He didn't care. He was better since he made more money than they did, thanks to ripping off all of them through creative accounting and delusions of adequacy, and legally too.

"Goddamned deadbeats--won't work, plenty of jobs out there, I know!!*#^!" As was always the case, nobody acted as though they were listening, and on a conscious level, they weren't. The man kept going on anyway, yammering away while seven people in rags were lined-up outside clutching signs with various inscriptions on them, but all of them essentially said "Will Work for Food" in one way or another. Most of them had been working weeks before, and very hard.

"Spoiling my view!" he muttered. He was only 35, but came off as a moldering 88.

"For the love of God, would you please shut the fuck up, sir, asshole--whateverthefuck your fuckin' name is? Jesus, fucker." asked and projectile-vomited a young lady in black leather, festooned with tattoos and piercings from head-to-toe.

"Why don't you go get a job, like me? I'm even self-employed, eh, top that, you loud-mouthed Goth-cooze!" he growled, drool flowing from both sides of his mouth, a vein throbbing on his forehead, and a visible erection showing through his dockers. Baboons have their own male species.

"I have a job, bitch," she shot back instantly, visibly smacking him in the face with the comment. "But...everyone fuckin' works, you crybaby asshole. What makes you so special, fuckface?" and she sat back down in the booth she was in and turned her back to him disrespectfully. There was a round of applause for a solid three minutes, but a few in the corner slunk out after paying their bill, looking suspiciously ignorant, even furtively so, as they went across the street to do business at the asshole's unimportant fiefdom.

The lay of the land: Oil - Iraq - Libya - North Korea

From our source in the Middle East (from raw-communiques):

OIL

US: +$100/barrel

EU: +$115/barrel

[[[Iraq's largest oil refinery in Baji - significant long term damage from al-qaeda cell sponsored by [I]ran revolutionary guard]]]

==========================================================

LIBYA

US CARRIER STRIKE GROUP ENTERPRISE

US EXPEDITIONARY ST[I]RKE GROUP KEARSARGE

UK MISSILE FRIGATE CUMBERLAND

SOUTH KOREAN DESTROYER CHOI YOUNG

US/NATO SPECIAL OPERATIONS FORCES

+/- 6,000 KIA

Libyan military & mercenaries (African & former Russian special forces) striking anti-government forces

Elements of Sudan and Zimbabwe National Armies assisting Qadaffi

Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov: We will veto any U.N. No Fly Zone resolution

Venezuela President Chavez proposes peace talks

==============================================

NORTH KOREA

Preparation for third nuclear test

Preparation for missile tests into Sea of Japan or over Japan into Pacific Ocean

North Korea/South Korea border: US Pacific Comma[n]d Key Resolve/Foal Eagle exercises

(((+10,500 US Forces from outside South Korea in addition to +/- 28,000 US Forces from South Korea)))

===============================================