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LulzSec says it is to disband

June 26, 2011 No Comment

Hacking organisation announces move on Twitter after attacks on entertainment company and law enforcement agency sites The LulzSec hacking group, which has sabotaged a trail of websites over the last two months including attacks on law enforcement agencies and the release of private data, has said it is dissolving itself. The group made the announcement through its Twitter account on Saturday. It gave no reason for the disbandment, which analysts say could be a sign of nerves in the face of law enforcement investigations. Rival hackers have also released information they say could point to the identities of the six-member group. LulzSec claimed hacks on major entertainment companies, FBI partner organisations, the CIA, the US senate and a pornography website. Kevin Mitnick, a security consultant and former hacker, said the group had probably concluded that the more it kept up its activities, the greater the chance was that a member would make a mistake enabling the authorities to catch them. LulzSec has inspired copycat groups around the world, he said, meaning similar attacks are likely to continue. “They can sit back and watch the mayhem and not risk being captured,” he added. As a parting shot, LulzSec released documents and login information apparently gleaned from gaming websites and corporate servers. The largest group of documents – 338 files – appears to be internal documents from AT&T, detailing its building of a new wireless broadband network in the US. The network is set to go live this summer. A spokesman for the phone company could not immediately confirm the authenticity of the documents. On Friday, a LulzSec member told AP the group was sitting on at least five gigabytes of government and law enforcement data from across the world, which it planned to release in the next three weeks. Saturday’s release was less than one-tenth of that size. In an unusual strategy for a hacker group, LulzSec has sought publicity and conducted a conversation with the public through its Twitter account. Observers believe it is an offshoot of Anonymous, a larger, more loosely-organised group that attempts to mobilise hackers for attacks on targets it considers immoral, such as oppressive Middle Eastern governments and opponents of WikiLeaks. LulzSec, in contrast, attacked anyone it could for “the lulz” – internet jargon for laughs. LulzSec Hacking guardian.co.uk

Chinese dissident Hu Jia released from prison

June 26, 2011 No Comment

Key figure in China’s dissident movement advocated broad range of civil liberties before being imprisoned in 2008 A prominent Chinese political activist who was imprisoned for sedition has been released at the end of his sentence, which lasted for more than three years, his wife has said. Hu Jia, a key figure in China’s dissident movement, advocated a broad range of civil liberties before being imprisoned in 2008. His freedom could be limited by continued surveillance. Hu returned home before dawn on Sunday, his wife, Zeng Jinyan, said in an online message. “Safe, very happy. Needs to recuperate for a period of time,” she wrote on Twitter. After visiting him on Monday at the Beijing municipal prison, she had said she would announce details of his release on Twitter. In a posting last week, she said that, upon his release, Hu – who suffers from a liver ailment – would be deprived of his political rights for a year and would not be able to speak to the media. “For this one year, the focus should be on treating his cirrhosis, caring for parents and child, to avoid being arrested again,” she wrote. Hu is known for his activism with Aids patients and orphans. The sedition charge arose from police accusations that the 37-year-old planned to work with foreigners to disturb the 2008 Beijing Olympics. His release comes amid one of the Chinese government’s broadest campaigns of repression in years as Beijing moves to prevent the growth of an Arab-style protest movement. The crackdown began in February. Like other dissidents released recently from jail, Hu may be kept under some sort of continued detention in his home, although such restrictions are illegal in China. There are concerns that extra-judicial tactics will be used against Hu, including illegally detaining him, the Human Rights Watch senior Asia researcher, Nicholas Bequelin, said. “Of course we are happy to have him be released – the problem is that we are not sure he is going to be released to freedom, but rather that he is going be again under some form of limitations to freedom, such as house arrest or monitoring and harassment by the authorities,” Bequelin said. Another activist, Chen Guangcheng, and his wife have been kept under an unofficial house arrest in their village in eastern China since he was released from prison during the autumn. Hu was freed several days after the outspoken artist Ai Weiwei was released after nearly three months in detention. He was one of the most prominent activists detained in the crackdown on dissent. The release coincided with the arrival of the Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, in Britain for an Anglo-Chinese summit. Wen will travel to London for talks with the prime minister, David Cameron, at No 10 on Monday and a UK-China summit at which a number of business deals are expected to be signed. It is thought that pressure ahead of the visit may have helped secure Ai’s release, which removes a potentially awkward exchange from the talks. In late 2008, Hu won the European parliament’s Sakharov Prize human rights award. He was honoured in Strasbourg where, because he was in prison, his name was placed in front of an empty seat. China’s Communist government heaped scorn on the award, with Beijing calling Hu a criminal. Initially an advocate for the rights of HIV and Aids patients, Hu expanded his efforts after the government gave little ground and he began to see the country’s problems as rooted in authorities’ lack of respect for human rights. He used the internet and telephone to chronicle the harassment and arrests of other dissidents and also published a series of articles criticising the authorities for using the Olympics to mask serious human rights abuses. China Wen Jiabao guardian.co.uk

Open Thread with "The Netroots Nation Double Album Podcast" with the Professional Left

June 25, 2011 No Comment

enlarge Credit: The Professional Left Time for your weekly podcast with the Professional Left, otherwise known as our own Driftglass and BlueGal , both just back from Netroots Nation last weekend. You can listen to the archives at http://professionalleft.blogspot.com/ and also make a donation there if you’d like to help keep these going. You can also follow them on Facebook at The Professional Left Podcast with Driftglass and Blue Gal . Have a great weekend and enjoy the podcast everyone.

RFK Jr. Claims Air America Was More Popular Than Conservative Radio

June 25, 2011 No Comment

… which helps explain why conservative radio continues to dominate the airwaves while Air America Radio, uh, went kaput. During a recent appearance on Tavis Smiley's PBS show, enviro lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose “Ring of Fire” show ran on Air America, made what reasonable souls among us might construe as a questionable claim. Here's Kennedy responding to a question from Smiley on how liberals can better hone their message (video clip after page break) — SMILEY: How do the people get the facts to deal with the issues that you're raising, that I'm raising, and others are raising consistently? KENNEDY: Well, you know, there's ways to do it nowadays. You can, you know, I mean, I do it in my own way which is, I don't use computers a lot. That's what my kids do. But you get, and you know, if you go to certain sites you'll get, you'll get truthful information, but it's really, I don't think we have the infrastructure yet to really deliver that kind of information in a targeted way that, information that is critical of corporate power. So much of the media's really dependent on corporate money, so you're not going to see, like Air America failed not because it wasn't popular. In every jurisdiction where it was operating it was beating out right-wing radio. There was a huge appetite for it. The problem was, it couldn't get advertising because the corporations, the oil companies, the biggest advertisers, the pharmaceutical companies, which is now 70 percent of the, of the revenue for, for, news shows on TV, is pharmaceutical companies. And so it's very hard to criticize them on the news. Automobile companies, which is the other big player, and many other, these companies won't, wouldn't advertise, they all boycotted Air America. So Air America was like, you know, relying on, like, you know, hair growth products and this kind of stuff and they were scrambling for money and they couldn't find it and it killed them. I don't pretend to be an expert on the machinations of radio markets across the country, but consider me skeptical. Air America was so popular, Kennedy claims, with a “huge appetite” among the public for its content , yet it could not line up advertisers because of that ever-so convenient bogeyman, corporate America. A claim like this begs for specifics — where and when did Air America Radio outdraw Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, etc., for listeners? This wasn't quite the take on Air America's demise as reported by Brian Stelter in the New York Times on Jan. 25 2010 — The nearly six-year-old network, which suffered from merry-go-round management and repeated financial shortfalls, halted production on Thursday evening, only one hour after staff members were told they were losing their jobs. … In an interview (Thom Hartmann) said he found Air America to be “spectacularly incompetent” at running a radio network and gaining an audience, and left Air America last year for a lesser-known syndication company. “We've been far more successful since we left,” he said. In interviews last week a half-dozen former Air America employees cited similar complaints, namely that a series of owners and managers lacked the necessary broadcasting business expertise. … Air America's problem, said Michael Harrison, editor of Talkers Magazine, was not knowing “whether they were a political campaign or a broadcasting company.” “They ended up not being terribly good at either,” Mr. Harrison added. The article curiously lacked any mention of a corporate “boycott” depriving Air America of advertising. The Times also cited the losses of Al Franken and Rachel Maddow as contributing to Air America's downfall, as did Hartmann and Randi Rhodes departing for other companies. (h/t, ihatethemedia.com)

It’s Come To This: CNN Brings On Psychics To Tell Us What The Economy Will Be Like

June 25, 2011 No Comment

What. In. The. Hell. Have. We. Come. To ? One woman thinks she can predict the future of the economy based on Ben Bernanke ’s moon sign. (On a related note: What the heck is a moon sign?) She predicts that Bernanke will have great success sometime in the late summer/early fall, though this might not necessarily have anything to do with the economy. Maybe he wins a free ocean cruise vacation or something. And by October Bernanke is “really, really happy.” Well, that settles it, then. Show’s over, folks, you can all go home! The Fed Chairman is scheduled to be really, really happy in about four months’ time, so you have absolutely nothing to worry about! What’s particularly hilarious about this segment is how seriously Taylor seems to take this subject and how she tries to talk about serious economic subjects with individuals who make a living making up random crap about people’s lives. Her attempts to discuss unemployment figures and the debt ceiling with psychics are about as useful as discussions of foreign policy with Call of Duty players. Bang. Head. On. Desk. I get the fun aspect of psychics, horoscopes, etc. I check my and my husband’s horoscope in the paper. A psychic once told my husband that he would marry late in life and have two kids, which turned out to be true. But asking psychics to predict the state of the economy based on Bernanke’s moon sign? OMG. If I can get meta for a moment, I really think this is more insidious than stupid. The pundits that we see everyday on the 24 hour cable channels are no more qualified to predict the future of the economy than these psychics. Really, what special knowledge does Bill Kristol or Pat Buchanan have that qualify them? But there’s a subtle message by relegating discussion of the economy to psychics that economic recovery is something that is up to chance, or the stars, or Providence. That it’s something that takes a special sense to understand and that is just frankly b.s. of the highest order. Economics is not that mystical, nor is it that difficult to understand. But as long as the media keeps it something beyond explanation, you foster a sense of hopelessness and helplessness among the viewers, which makes them far more dependent upon experts.

Signs Your Governor May Have A Koch Problem

June 25, 2011 No Comment

Ohio Governor John Kasich lets his Koch love fly free. From the ACLU-blog The addiction of governors across the country to the Koch brothers’ agenda seems to be growing stronger every day. Here are some warning signs your governor might have a Koch problem: 1. Are they planning on attending the upcoming Koch brothers invitation-only strategy session in ritzy Vail, Colorado? Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell has already confirmed his attendance. Just because your governor hasn’t announced his or her attendance doesn’t mean he or she is not planning on going. The Koch brothers hold biannual seminars but like to keep their strategy sessions secret so they don’t out their followers. If you have the opportunity, ask them! 2. Did your governor support attacks on collective bargaining rights for public service workers? The Koch brothers’ front group, Americans for Prosperity, pushed attacks on the collective bargaining rights of firefighters, teachers, nurses, police officers and other public service workers in Wisconsin and Ohio and other states. During the Wisconsin struggle, Gov. Scott Walker was recorded taking a call from a prank caller he thought was David Koch and openly discussed the assault on working families. 3. Is your governor pushing massive tax breaks that would benefit the Koch brothers and other corporate cronies? The Koch brothers fought hard for the Bush tax cuts to continue in December but they also took their fight for tax breaks for the rich to their Koch-addicted governors. In Ohio, Gov. John Kasich taped a personal thank you video for Americans for Prosperity for the group’s work pushing a repeal of the estate tax, which would only benefit the rich in Ohio. Oh and there’s more. Go check them out at ACLU-blog .