Tag Archives: Wikileaks

June 4, 2012 · 7:47 AM

Ten Reasons to Avoid Doing Business With Amazon.com

I’m re-posting this article for TFC readers not as a suggestion to stop using Amazon, but more on the basis of “information we all should know about Amazon dot com”.

Everyone should make their own decision on this matter.

The Nation

Even with Borders gone and independent booksellers struggling to get by, the war for the future of publishing rages on. As Steve Wasserman explains in “The Amazon Effect,” which appears in this week’s special issue of The Nation, booksellers and publishers have shifted toward digital books, and Amazon.com, which sells more electronic Kindle books than physical hardcovers, is well positioned to overpower its rivals. But what’s at stake in the battle over e-commerce and why should you avoid doing business with Amazon.com?

1.  Amazon Dodges Taxes and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Doesn’t Contribute to Local Economies Through Charity

Last year, the Greenlining Institute reported that Amazon’s tax rate was among the lowest, at just 3.5 percent, of all companies included in the study. Yet despite the massive savings Amazon enjoys from exploiting tax loopholes, the company contributessurprisingly little to charities around its Seattle-area headquarters.

2.  Amazon’s Business Model Is Monopolistic

Amazon is the world’s largest bookseller, offering more than 2 million titles. In an effort to lower prices, the company has demanded additional discounts from distributors—which, as Colin Robinson points out, is illegal under anti-trust law that prevents companies from selling a product at different prices to different customers. The company has been accused of having a “monopolistic grip on the publishing industry.”

3.  Amazon Contributes to the Demise of Small, Independent Businesses

Amazon offers bestsellers at a loss in order to attract customers, a practice that has upended traditional publishing in the United States. But it doesn’t have to be this way, as Germany’s bookselling model illustrates.

4.  Amazon Collects Your Information

Amazon.com states that it is “not in the business of selling” customers’ private information—e.g., what you buy, what you review, how you browse—to other companies, but last year Amazon.com was embroiled in a class-action lawsuit (Del Vecchio et al. v. Amazon.com) for allegedly bypassing customers’ privacy settings. Others have raised concerns about Kindle Fire’s web browser, fearing it would allow the company “to track customer behavior all over the Web, gathering data and marketing intelligence as it goes,” according to the New York Times.

5.  Amazon Removed WikiLeaks from its Cloud Server

Under political pressure, Amazon removed WikiLeaks from its cloud server in 2010, prompting this question from Keir Thomas of PC World: “In an idyllic future where we make heavy use of the cloud, what happens if a cloud service provider removes content it deems inappropriate, or just doesn’t like?”

6.  Amazon Was a Long-time Member of ALEC

Amazon was late to pull out of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative, pro-business nonprofit that recently came under fire for helping spread voter-identification and “Stand Your Ground” laws. Amazon, which has fought state-level taxation, focused on tax laws in ALEC.

7.  Amazon Fights Unionization

When the Communications Workers of America launched a campaign to unionize Amazon’s customer-service representatives, the company argued that “unions actively foster distrust toward supervisors” and “create an uncooperative attitude among associates by leading them to think they are ‘untouchable’ with a union,” according to theNew York Times. To make matters worse, many Amazon employees are temporary workers who do not receive basic benefits like healthcare, and for whom forming a union is “virtually impossible.”

8.  Amazon Abuses Its Workers

Working conditions at Amazon.com warehouses can be brutal. Last fall, the Morning Callreported that employees were being “pushed to work at a pace many could not sustain” in warehouses where the temperature exceeded 100 degrees, causing workers to feel light-headed and pass out.

9.  Amazon Has Turned Searching Into Another Way To Collect Users’ Information

Amazon has made searching easier and more efficient, providing free information about books and, in some cases, permitting readers to “look inside” them. However, as Anthony Grafton explains in “Search Gets Lost,” the company has gradually cut back on its search capabilities, instead inviting the customer to provide information of every sort for Amazon to digest and profit from.

10.  Amazon Is Just Too Big

In 2011, Amazon’s $48 billion in revenue exceeded that of all six major publishing conglomerates combined. It now resembles an “online Walmart” rather than a bookseller, writes Steve Wasserman, and has begun to colonize movie, baby product and shoe retailer websites, as well as the high-end fashion industry. For more on Amazon’s outsized power, be sure to read all of the articles in this week’s special issue on the retail giant.

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September 1, 2011 · 5:23 PM

WikiLeaks cable: U.S. troops handcuffed, shot Iraqi children in raid

I must admit that when I read this story at around 8:00 am on the McClatchey site, I was hesitant about reporting it for various reasons which I won’t detail here.

I will not post the horrifying picture that accompanies the story on either McClatchey or The Raw Story.  One would have to click on the link to either site to witness the horrific graphic detail.

In every war this country has ever fought, there are a few soldiers, who for whatever reason, have sunken into the darkest depths of the so-called fog of war.

The Raw Story

According to a diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks, U.S. troops massacred an Iraqi family in the town of Ishaqi in 2006, handcuffing and then shooting 11 people in the head including a woman in her 70′s and five children ages five and under.

McClatchy is reporting that the soldiers then called in an air strike on the house to cover up evidence of the killings.

This account differs sharply from an official version of the 2006 incident, which indicated that coalition forces captured an al Qaeda in Iraq operative in the house, which was destroyed in a firefight. The WikiLeaks cable, however, corroborates accounts by Ishaqi townspeople and includes questions about the incident by Philip Alston, the U.N.’s special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions.

The cable is dated twelve days after the incident, which took place March 15, 2006. In it, Alston says that autopsies performed in Tikrit on bodies pulled from the wreckage of the farmhouse indicated that all of the dead had been handcuffed and shot in the head.

The victims included “at least 10 persons, namely Mr. Faiz Hratt Khalaf, (aged 28), his wife Sumay’ya Abdul Razzaq Khuther (aged 24), their three children Hawra’a (aged 5) Aisha (aged 3) and Husam (5 months old), Faiz’s mother Ms. Turkiya Majeed Ali (aged 74), Faiz’s sister (name unknown), Faiz’s nieces Asma’a Yousif Ma’arouf (aged 5 years old), and Usama Yousif Ma’arouf (aged 3 years), and a visiting relative Ms. Iqtisad Hameed Mehdi (aged 23) were killed during the raid.”

Here is the cable…

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July 25, 2011 · 12:07 AM

#f@ckyouwashington hashtag takes Twitter by storm

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It’s pretty cool to see so many Twitter™ responses to Washington politicians’ ineptitude…

Raw Story

Most suddenly-popular Twitter hashtags refer to events or celebrities that currently are in the news. But every once in a while, one erupts out of nowhere to capture the mood of the Twitterverse.

The hashtag #fuckyouwashington is currently making the rounds in just that fashion. As explained in a post at tagdef.com, “Thousands of tweets erupted in a matter of hours on #Jul23 protesting the US’s failed debt ceiling talks and general policies. Spurred by @JeffJarvis . Seen by some as part of #WorldRevolution or #USRevolution.”

A second post helpfully adds, “Our discontent with the way things operate. It’s gross.”

Although the tag may have been inspired by the current impasse over raising the debt ceiling, it seems to have released a much wider sense of frustration. Within a few hours, message boards like Democratic Underground were gathering some of the best tweets using the tag.

“#FuckYouWashington For Forgetting WHO you represent, Families, Elderly,Moms,Kids, WORKERs..NOT the CoporatePigs who you cater to…#ShameOnU” one reads.

“#fuckyouwashington for sending our soldiers on 6, 7, 8 tours to combat zones yet thinking it’s too much to ask the richest to pay taxes” say another.

And @YourAnonNews — a Twitter account associated with Anonymous — tweeted, “#FuckYouWashington for thinking activists are the same as terrorists.”

Other tweets gathered by CBSNews blasted Washington for everything from the handling of last year’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill to the criminalization of marijuana to going after WikiLeaks while not holding Bush administration officials accountable for turture.

Jarvis is a journalism professor at the City University of New York, an expert on new media, and the author of What Would Google Do? Late on Saturday evening, he tweeted, “OK, my fellow citizens, it’s up to you now,” as though he felt content with what he had accomplished, but since then he has continued to promote use of the tag in his own tweets.

On Sunday morning, Jarvis retweeted a message from AnonyOps — another account associated with Anonymous — saying, “@jeffJarvis you’ve started a shit storm. Nice going.” That seems to sum up much of the current feeling.

A current Twitter feed of posts using the tag can be found here.

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July 1, 2011 · 8:06 AM

This is Brilliant…

…and probably bound to be quite effective…

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March 14, 2011 · 2:27 AM

Anonymous to Leak Bank of America Documents Monday

Photo of Bank of America ATM Machine by Brian ...
Image via Wikipedia

 Although Gawker is somewhat skeptical about this new offering of email leaks from “Anonymous”, apparently the activist group  is planning to expose Bank of America documents sometime today.   If I were those folks in the financial industry, I’d be very afraid of what may be about to hit the proverbial fan…

Gawker

A member of the activist collective Anonymous is claiming to be have emails and documents which prove “fraud” was committed by Bank of America employees, and the group says it’ll release them on Monday. The member, who goes by the Twitter handle OperationLeakS, has already posted an internal email from the formerly Bank of America-owned Balboa Insurance Company.

Anonymous to Leak Bank of America Documents Monday

The email is between Balboa Insurance vice president Peggy Johnson and other Balboa employees. (Click right to enlarge.) As far as we can tell, it doesn’t show anything suspicious, but was posted by OperationLeaks as a teaser. He also posted emails he claims are from the disgruntled employee who sent him the material. In one, the employee says he can “send you a copy of the certified letter sent to me by an AVP of BofA’s [HR department] telling me I am banned from stepping foot on BofA property or contacting their employee ever again.”

OperationLeaks, which runs the anti-Bank of America site BankofAmericasuck.com, says the employee contacted the group to blow the whistle on Bank of America’s shady business practices. “I seen some of the emails… I can tell you Grade A Fraud in its purest form…” read one tweet. “He Just told me he have GMAC emails showing BoA order to mix loan numbers to not match it’s Documents.. to foreclose on Americans.. Shame.”

An Anonymous insider told us he believes the leak is real. “From what I know and have been told, it’s legit,” he said. “Should be a round of emails, then some files, possible some more emails to follow that.” The documents should be released Monday on Anonleaks.ch, the same site where Anonymous posted thousands of internal emails from hacked security company HBGary last month. That leak exposed a legally-questionable plot to attack Wikileaks and ultimately led to the resignation of HBGary CEO Aaron Barr.

There are lots of reasons to be skeptical about this latest supposed leak. For now, it’s a guy who hates Bank of America and posted a single internal Balboa email and some seriously outrageous claims to Twitter. (When emailed for comment he posted our email to Twitter with “Fuck you, Gawker.”) It’s unclear what he’s actually got. And the whole incident echoes the time Wikileaks claimed to have its own Bank of America bombshell leak, which turned out to be a dud.

But those we’ve spoken to in Anonymous are convinced there’s something to this. Anonymous has a proven track record with leaks, and Bank of America has been in their crosshairs since they cut off payments to Wikileaks in December. If it’s real, it could be big. Keep your eye on anonleaks.ch: It should hit Monday.

Update: The leak will drop at 12:00am on Monday morning. According to Reuters, a Bank of America spokesman has confirmed the existence of a leak, saying it consists of “non-foreclosure related clerical and administrative documents stolen by a former Balboa Insurance employee.” The spokesman told Reuters, “We are confident that his extravagant assertions are untrue.”

UPDATE: It appears some of the emails may have been leaked already.
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February 24, 2011 · 12:25 AM

The Best of Wikileaks’ Qaddafi Dirt

Muammar Qaddafi is certifiable.  It’s a wonder how he stayed in office so long…

Gawker

How crazy is hopefully-soon-to-be-deposed Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi? Why don’t we check Wikileaks to find out? (Spoiler alert: He is pretty crazy.)

Wikileaks, the secrets-sharing website that began to release a huge cache of classified diplomatic cables last year, has several messages about Qaddafi and Libya. As, we guess, some kind of retrospective of corruption, despotism and derangement, both The New York Times and ABC News combed through the state department’s Qaddafi-related cables, trying to flesh out our picture of Qaddafi’s regime. And, wow! It’s pretty awful. Obviously, there is some charmingly flamboyant eccentricity, as in this now-classic cable:

Qadhafi appears to rely heavily on XXXXXXXXXXXX and reportedly cannot travel with his senior Ukrainian nurse, Galyna XXXXXXXXXXXX. He also appears to have an intense dislike or fear of staying on upper floors, reportedly prefers not to fly over water, and seems to enjoy horse racing and flamenco dancing.

Or, in a cable intended for then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice preparing her for her visit to Libya (emphasis ours):

Muammar al-Qadhafi is notoriously mercurial. He often avoids making eye contact during the initial portion of meetings, and there may be long, uncomfortable periods of silence. Alternatively, he can be an engaging and charming interlocutor, as he was during NEA A/S Welch’s meeting on August 14. A self-styled intellectual and philosopher, he has been eagerly anticipating for several years the opportunity to share with you his views on global affairs. We’ve been told that issues he might raise include Sarkozy’s Union for the Mediterranean proposal (which al-Qadhafi opposes), the Georgia conflict, illegal migration (Libya is a key transit country), Iran, Iraq and the Arab-Israeli conflict (including his “Isratine” one-state solution), and Africa.

But for every “Isratine,” there are ten cables about the regime’s corruption and brutality. Like this one:

Qadhafi often speaks out publicly against government corruption, but the politically-connected elite has direct access to lucrative business deals. This commercial access can easily be cut off when individuals fall out of favor. The Qadhafi family and other Jamahiriya political favorites profit from being able to manipulate the multi-layered and regularly shifting dynamics of governance mechanisms in Libya. They have strong interests in the oil and gas sector, telecommunications, infrastructure development, hotels, media distribution, and consumer goods distribution. The financial interests of Qadhafi and his key allies present both opportunites and challenges for reform efforts in Libya. Any reform is likely to be cyclical over the long-term.

Much more here…

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February 22, 2011 · 1:55 AM

The Pentagon Papers That Donald Rumsfeld Doesn’t Want You to See

TPM LiveWire

When Donald Rumsfeld released his memoir Known and Unknown, he made a big deal out of putting thousands of documents from his archives online in a sop to transparency and accuracy. But he didn’t put them all online. And we’ve found some of the papers that Rumsfeld would have preferred to toss down the memory hole.

The Rumsfeld Papers web site, which launched earlier this month as a complement to the memoir, is a collection of Rumsfeld’s memos, speeches, and other documents going back to his days as an undergraduate at Princeton in the 1950s. The idea, according to a researcher he hired for the project, “to get more information in people’s hands” because “he really thinks the free flow of information is critical to a vibrant democracy.” Rumsfeld himself compared the digital archive to a sort of legit version of Wikileaks.

Except Rumsfeld, of course, only posted the information that he wanted to flow freely. The other stuff–like his callous attempts to keep John Walker Lindh from getting speedy trial, his effort to whitewash the Pentagon’s detainee policy, and the friendly op-eds he tried to plant in newspapers–he left out. Luckily, we were able to get a hold of some of the papers from his days as defense secretary that Rumsfeld reviewed and deliberately withheld from the archive.        More…

  

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December 30, 2010 · 7:24 AM

Are Right-Wing Libertarian Internet Trolls Getting Paid to Dumb Down Online Conversations?

I don’t know if their getting paid, but I do know there are a lot of them on  internet forums…

AlterNet

There are daily attempts to control and influence content in the interests of the state and corporations: attempts in which money talks.

They are the online equivalent of enclosure riots: the rick-burning, fence-toppling protests by English peasants losing their rights to the land. When MasterCard, Visa, Paypal and Amazon tried to shut WikiLeaks out of the cyber-commons, an army of hackers responded by trying to smash their way into these great estates and pull down their fences.

In the Wikileaks punch-up the commoners appear to have the upper hand. But it’s just one battle. There’s a wider cyberwar being fought, of which you hear much less. And in most cases the landlords, with the help of a mercenary army, are winning.

I’m not talking here about threats to net neutrality and the danger of a two-tier internet developing, though these are real. I’m talking about the daily attempts to control and influence content in the interests of the state and corporations: attempts in which money talks.

The weapon used by both state and corporate players is a technique known as astroturfing. An astroturf campaign is one that mimics spontaneous grassroots mobilizations, but which has in reality been organized. Anyone writing a comment piece in Mandarin critical of the Chinese government, for example, is likely to be bombarded with abuse by people purporting to be ordinary citizens, upset by the slurs against their country.

But many of them aren’t upset: they are members of the 50 Cent Party, so-called because one Chinese government agency pays 5 mao (half a yuan) for every post its tame commenters write. Teams of these sock-puppets are hired by party leaders to drown out critical voices and derail intelligent debates.   More…

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December 23, 2010 · 5:05 PM

Sarah Palin Uses Info Gleaned From ‘Treasonous’ WikiLeaks To Pen Op-Ed On Dangers Of Iran

Is this not the height of hypocrisy?

Huffington Post

Sarah Palin sought to build her foreign policy credentials on Tuesday, with a new op-ed arguing that the Obama administration needs to “toughen up” on Iran based on information from leaked diplomatic cables that she had earlier denounced.

The former Alaska Governor writes in USA Today:

Iran continues to defy the international community in its drive to acquire nuclear weapons. Arab leaders in the region rightly fear a nuclear-armed Iran. We suspected this before, but now we know for sure because of leaked diplomatic cables. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia “frequently exhorted the U.S. to attack Iran to put an end to its nuclear weapons program,” according to these communications. Officials from Jordan said the Iranian nuclear program should be stopped by any means necessary. Officials from the United Arab Emirates and Egypt saw Iran as evil, an “existential threat” and a sponsor of terrorism. If Iran isn’t stopped from obtaining nuclear weapons, it could trigger a regional nuclear arms race in which these countries would seek their own nuclear weapons to protect themselves.

The “leaked diplomatic cables” that Palin speaks of are, of course, dispatches released as part of  WikiLeaks’ latest document dump, an action that she deemed “treasonous,” later asking why the group’s founder, Julian Assange, was not “pursued with the same urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders.”

The general thrust of Palin’s op-ed is that the potential danger of Iran — nuclear or non-nuclear — is enough to warrant an escalation of the existing United Nations economic sanctions:

Much more can be done, such as banning insurance for shipments to Iran, banning all military sales to Iran, ending all trade credits, banning all financial dealings with Iranian banks, limiting Iran’s access to international capital markets and banking services, closing air space and waters to Iran’s national air and shipping lines, and, especially, ending Iran’s ability to import refined petroleum.

Palin made another foray into foreign policy over the summer when she blasted out her manifesto via Facebook. In that release, she argued for a sacrosanct defense budget, a reaffirmation of unconditional ties with Israel, and the elimination of a timetable for the drawdown of troops.

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· 6:10 AM

Assange calls for criminal charges against ‘shock jock’ Fox hosts

Raw Story

WikiLeaks founder calls Bradley Manning ‘political prisoner’; says Fox hosts, politicians committing ‘terrorism’

Julian Assange has accused Fox personalities Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin, among others, of committing terrorism through their calls to hunt down and kill the WikiLeaks founder.

In an interview with MSNBC’s Cenk Uygur, Assange referred to the politicians-turned-Fox-personalities as “shock jocks” who should be charged for inciting violence against him and his organization.

He also referred to Huckabee as “just another idiot trying to make a name for himself.”

Asked what he thought of the accusation — made by Vice President Joe Biden and others — that he is a “high-tech terrorist,” Assange said his organization’s actions didn’t meet the definition of terrorism — but those of Fox personalities and other TV pundits did.

“We see constant threats from people, the Republican Senate trying to make a name for themselves, people like Sarah Palin to shock jocks on Fox and, unfortunately, some members also of the Democratic Party, calling for my assassination, calling for the illegal kidnapping of my staff,” Assange said.

“What sort of message does that send about the rule of law in the United States? That is conducing violence in order to achieve a political end. The elimination of this organization or the threat of violence to achieve a political end, the elimination of a publisher. And that is the definition of terrorism.”     More…

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