How dumb are these people? Only last week did swiss bank syndicate Bank Julius Baer learn (we hope) that Internet censorship is FUTILE in their lame attempt to censor WikiLeaks. Now, Pakistan is taking a limp-penis poke at net-censorship by attempting to block YouTube, only to screw themselves off the net.

These blogs from ZDNet’s Richard Stiennon shows the brief timeline thus far:

3:16 PM Eastern US time:

Pakistan takes out YouTube by ZDNet’s Richard Stiennon — Like I said in a recent post, the Internet is a series of tubes. Sometimes that helps route around malicious legislation and regulators, somethings it causes big problems. Like today at 2 PM eastern when someone in Pakistan announced a more specific BGP route announcement for the block of IP addresses that YouTube uses. Routers […]

3:36 PM:

Pakistan declares war on YouTube by ZDNet’s Richard Stiennon — What could at first have been just one of those days on the Internet where some newbie engineer accidentally announces a spurious route and takes out a segment of the network has turned into an international fiasco. But no, Pakastan has ordered all ISP’s to block YouTube. From Yahoo news: ISLAMABAD (AFP) - Pakistan has […]

4:40 PM:

Pakistan removed from the Internet by ZDNet’s Richard Stiennon — 4:30 PM Eastern (US). The telecom company that carries most of Pakistan’s traffic, PCCW, has found it necessary to shut Pakistan off from the Internet while they filter out the malicious routes that a Pakistani ISP, PieNet, announced earlier today. Evidently PieNet took this step to enforce a decree from the Pakistani government that ISP’s […]

Richard’s third blog has his comment that pretty much puts the Pakistani zealots in their place:

A religious state, Pakistan, identifies a content provider, YouTube, as the source of blasphemous, seditious content and orders, King Canute style, that the Internet tides be stopped. A zealous ISP ignorantly decides the best way to comply with the decree is to re-route all of YouTube’s IP addresses to whatever site they thought was more appropriate. The first repercussion was that YouTube disappeared from the Internet for almost an hour. I suspect the second repercussion was that Pakistan’s Internet access crawled to a halt as all of a sudden they were handling IP requests for one of the busiest sites in the world. As of this writing YouTube has announced more granular routes so that at least in the US they supercede the routes announced by PieNet. The rest of the world is still struggling. So, while working on a fix that will filter out the spurious route announcements, PCCW has found it necessary to shut down Pakistan’s Internet access. The leadership of Pakistan just created a massive Denial of Service on their own country.

Pakistan took itself offline… SMOOTH MOVE EX-LAX!

Musharraf calls “blasphemy,” someone else calls “shenanigans.” The Islamabad zealots called for the blockage of YouTube for “containing ‘blasphemous’ content and material considered offensive to Islam.”

…BUT…

There may be another reason for the god-squad’s knee-jerk reaction, as shown in this post on Blogger News Network:

Musharraf’s Inquisition: Reason Why YouTube Was Blocked In Pakistan
February 24th, 2008 by Farrukh Khan Pitafi

The telecommunication authorities are claiming in Pakistan that YouTube was blocked for featuring allegedly blasphemous documentaries. While this move if triggered by this motive is as foolish as burning an entire library just because on a page of one of the books someone has scribbled a couple of words against you, it is far from truth. Actually Musharraf is a very self centered and insecure man these days and has recently learned from his sycophants that YouTube carries many videos critical of his government especially his torture on lawyers and political captives and since during this campaign technology played critical role in influencing people he wants to block out every kind of criticism. Again many citizens have reportedly uploaded video clips showing rigging under process in the constituencies where his allies either won or managed to dilute the verdict. There is distant though connected evidence why this must be true.

The day when the government decided to block YouTube two things happened. First AAJ TV brought back on air two of its anchors banned by Musharraf. The channel was immediately blocked by the satellite operator. The crime of the two anchors (Nusrat Javed and Mushtaq Minhas) was only to doubt Musharraf’s previous claims thinking out loud on television. Musharraf’s this ban has affected many of Pakistan’s leading anchors and opinion leaders of which I am aware of Dr Shahid Masood, Hamid Mir, Asma Sherazi and Kashif Abbasi apart from the above two.

The second thing that happened was the airing of an investigative report by Geo television which showed footage of rigging in the constituencies of Musharraf loyalists made through hidden camera. This too has reportedly not gone down well with Musharraf. Since in the past the regime also tried to block google’s weblog hosting service blogger.com in the name of countering blasphemy, the ban on YouTube does not seem anything different. But Musharraf’s toadies are not happy with Pakistani blogs and cable channels too. So a similar ban may follow on these outlets too unless the west pressures him not to do so. This episode however has exposed Musharraf’s liberal credentials and committment to fighting extremism yet again.

Lessons NOT learned. Somebody didn’t learn from Bank Julius Baer’s idiocy in trying to get WikiLeaks shut down, but since they’ve cut themselves off the net it’s understandable. If Pakistan needs to learn a lesson, it is this:

You silence the TRUTH, it will become louder.
You blind the TRUTH, it will become brighter and clearer.
You suppress the TRUTH, it will oppress you.
You close the door on the TRUTH, it will open the windows.
You imprison the TRUTH, it will escape.
You devalue the TRUTH, it will become more valuable than you can afford.
You claim the TRUTH is a lie, it will prove YOU are the lie.
You strangle the TRUTH, it will slip through your iron fist like so much sand.
You declare the TRUTH is dead, it will live longer and stronger.

And as ZDNet’s Dana Blankenhorn wrote:

Congratulations, Musharraf. You just screwed the nation you’re supposed to lead.

Message displayed while WikiLeaks home page loads.

A war against TRUTH. The website WikiLeaks.org had the potential of making lots of enemies: A website that dares to expose the TRUTH that others want suppressed, especially if that TRUTH hurts their profits or power structure. But nobody expected an American judge to make an attempt to censor or shut down WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks posted some documents showing a Swiss banking group, Bank Julius Baer, was engaged in criminal activities, specifically money laundering and tax evasion. The group asked the documents be removed “because they could affect the outcome of a separate legal case in Switzerland.” (Web Pro News) You would think that would be enough, but California judge Jeffery White, a Duh’bya appointee nonetheless, decided to go further. Here’s the original “permanent injunction” the dumb fuck granted Bank Julius Baer against Dynadot, WikiLeaks’ domain registrar:

1. Dynadot shall immediately lock the wikileaks.org domain name to prevent transfer of the domain name to a different domain registrar, and shall immediately disable the wikileaks.org domain name and account to prevent access to and any changes from being made to the domain name and account information, until further order of this Court.

2. Dynadot shall immediately disable the wikileaks.org domain name and account such that the optional privacy who-is service for the domain name and account remains turned off, until further order of this Court.

3. Dynadot shall preserve a true and correct copy of both current and any and all prior or previous administrative and account records and data for the wikileaks.org domain name and account.

4. Dynadot shall immediately clear and remove all DNS hosting records for the wikileaks.org domain name and prevent the domain name from resolving to the wikileaks.org website or any other website or server other than a blank park page, until further order of this Court.

5. Dynadot shall immediately produce both current and any all prior or previous administrative and account records and data for the wikileaks.org domain name and account, including, but not limited to, all data for the registrant; billing, technical and administrative
contacts; all account and payment records and associated data; and IP addresses and associated data used by any person, other than Dynadot, who accessed the account for the domain name, to the extent such information is maintained by Dynadot.

6. Plaintiffs shall immediately upon entry of this order file a dismissal with prejudice in favor of Dynadot. Notwithstanding the foregoing, plaintiffs and Dynadot stipulate and agree that the Court shall retain jurisdiction to enforce this order.

Dated: February , 2008
Jeffrey S. White
United States District Judge
Case 3:08-cv-00824-JSW Document 47-2 Filed 02/14/2008 Page 2 of 2

Translation: Dumb fuck judge Jeffey wants WikiLeaks shut down, most likely because he’s afraid of somebody leaking information on how much in kickbacks he’s getting from Bank Julius Baer for being so compliant.

Can’t keep a good website down. WikiLeaks has to be a tough mofo with what they have to deal with at times, such as a recent DDoS attack on their servers, a fire in an Uninterruptible Power Supply, and threats from governments. Some over-glorified shark asswipe in a little black dress with no clue to what the Internet is about isn’t going to stop WikiLeaks’ mission of exposing the TRUTH. Already, they have several alternate URLs to lead you there, or you can just use their IP address of 88.80.13.160.

What started the fight. The Cryptome website has the damning documents Bank Julius Baer want deleted, along with other docs being lobbed at Dynadot and WikiLeaks. They also have links to mirrors of WikiLeaks’ archives in case the sharks succeed in shutting them down… not that that’s likely to happen.

UPDATE (19-Feb-08): Judge backs down on shutdown order. Looks like Judge Jeffey came to his senses. ZDNet’s Richard Komen reports that the permanent injunction has been amended; Reducing it to a temporary restraining order and removing the orders that the site be disabled. The order to remove the “offending” documents remains, but don’t expect WikiLeaks to comply anytime soon. According to correspondence between BJB and WikiLeaks, BJB’s shysters have been vague and evasive in their demands, going so far as conducting a sneak-attack ex-parte hearing by notifying WikiLeaks only hours in advance.

From ZDNet’s Richard Komen:

It seems that WikiLeaks lawyers were able to convince the judge that something was amiss here, because the second order, a TRO, provides WikiLeaks an opportunity to answer (by Feb. 20) and JB to respond to that answer (by Feb. 26.) One question is whether JB lied about there being a stipulation for WikiLeaks to go offline, since WL compained so vociferously about it and the order was so quickly amended.

A hearing on the injunction is scheduled for Feb. 29 at the U.S. District Court in San Francisco.

UPDATE (20-Feb-08): Syndicate was looking to go public:

Bank that censored WikiLeaks was preparing for IPO by ZDNet’s Richard Koman — I just received this press statment from WikiLeaks: Wikileaks has discovered Bank Julius Baer was preparing to take their US operation public via an a billion dollar IPO. They filed the prospectus with the SEC on Feb 12, a mere three days before convincing Federal court Judge Jeffery White to order total censorship of the transparency […]

The prospectus can be viewed online here. Of course the SEC wouldn’t want to be accused of aiding a criminal enterprise… right? So many potential millions of US dollars being funneled into a criminal organization now in jeopardy because of the TRUTH being leaked out… SOMETHING has to be done to suppress the TRUTH.

Harsh lessons about the TRUTH. Take notes, BJB, there will be a pop quiz later.

You silence the TRUTH, it will become louder.
You blind the TRUTH, it will become brighter and clearer.
You suppress the TRUTH, it will oppress you.
You close the door on the TRUTH, it will open the windows.
You imprison the TRUTH, it will escape.
You devalue the TRUTH, it will become more valuable than you can afford.
You claim the TRUTH is a lie, it will prove YOU are the lie.
You strangle the TRUTH, it will slip through your iron fist like so much sand.
You declare the TRUTH is dead, it will live longer and stronger.

Perhaps the best description of what is happening comes from ZDNet’s Dana Blankenhorn:

Censorship just makes the news bigger, and making it harder to get makes it more attractive. Successful censorship isolates entire countries, economy and all.
…
Julius Baer, the bank which tried to keep its secrets, and Judge Jeffrey S. White, the Bush appointee who tried to help it do so, are going to learn the hard way what the rest of us have known for over a decade.

While the year-old Wikileaks has just made its bones.

UPDATE: 2-Mar-2008. Judge Jeffrey White got a clue; He has reversed his injunctions against WikiLeaks (dot-org) and the site is now available via WikiLeaks.org.

A couple of quotes from Judge White’s decision:

Wired:

The judge conceded the futility of attempts to censor information, in this instance private banking records, after it has been posted to the internet.

“When this genie gets out of the bottle, it’s out for all purposes,” U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White said after a more than 3-hour-long hearing here. Earlier, White said he had “an obligation to get it right” and that “I took an oath to uphold the Constitution.”

News.com:

One attorney for BJB said there were no First Amendment problems, invoking a U.S. Supreme Court precedent dealing with an intercepted conversation played by a radio station because, “We allege, your honor, that Wikileaks has actively solicited the theft of private information…they are participants in the illegality.”

BJB also said, “We’re talking about private banking information, account numbers, personal numbers like Social Security numbers…all this is private information that’s not newsworthy…None of the publishers here today would want their own banking information posted on the Internet.”

The judge’s preruling reply: “Let me play devil’s advocate here. Is it newsworthy if some prominent citizen is…evading taxes, laundering funds? Wouldn’t that be something in the public interest?”

Another hearing is scheduled for May 16.

The current average lifespan of a human is around 80 years. The oldest person lived to be 122 years, while an Israeli Arab woman is claiming to be 120. And many gerontologists believe that 125 years is the maximum. But if researchers in California are right, they can possibly extend human life to 1000 YEARS.

From The Independent (UK), Science section:

A genetically engineered organism that lives 10 times longer than normal has been created by scientists in California. It is the greatest extension of longevity yet achieved by researchers investigating the scientific nature of ageing.

If this work could ever be translated into humans, it would mean that we might one day see people living for 800 years. But is this ever going to be a realistic possibility?

Valter Longo is one of the small but influential group of specialists in this area who believes that an 800-year life isn’t just possible, it is inevitable. It was his work at the University of Southern California that led to the creation of a strain of yeast fungus that can live for 10 weeks or more, instead of dying at its usual maximum age of just one week.

By deleting two genes within the yeast’s genome and putting it on a calorie-restricted diet, Longo was able to extend tenfold the lifespan of the same common yeast cells used by bakers and brewers. The study is published later this week in the journal Public Library of Science Genetics.

One thousand years of life? The idea of centuries-to-an-eon life span in humans may sound wrong to those who study aging, but even aging occurs at different rates in different people, which would explain why some live over one hundred years while others die early (for reasons other than suicide or murder, of course). Longo believes that this is the result of genetic programming:

“Basically, it is the first demonstration, to our knowledge, that ageing is programmed and altruistic,” Longo says. “The organisms we have studied die long before they have to in order to provide nutrients for ‘mutants’ generated within their own population. Thus, billions of organisms die early so that a few better-adapted individuals can grow.”

This raises the possibility that the same process happens in humans, and that, as a result, many people are dying earlier than they need to. “Programmed human ageing is just a possibility. We don’t know whether it’s true yet or not. But if ageing is programmed in yeast, and the [metabolic] pathway is very similar, then isn’t it possible that humans also die earlier than they have to?”

While yeast is a far cry from humans, it is the first step to extending human life as the methods used can be adapted and refined to extend the life of other increasingly complex organisms. By that time, they may know enough about aging to slow the process down to extend life even further, and other advances in stem cells and bionics may allow one to replace their aged, obsolete bodies completely.

As always, stay tuned… This is going to get interesting.

…So there I was, using Songbird to find some good music to load onto my Creative Zen player. On a whim, I searched for songs with “Heavy Metal” in the title as I was looking for Sammy Hagar’s “Heavy Metal Noise.” Never found that tune, but another tune jumped out at me. It was called “Heavy Metal Kids.” Take a listen to it.

First time I listened to it, I would have sworn upon Satan’s testicles that the tune was from Black Sabbath; It certainly sounded like Sabbath. But NO! It was from Kraftwerk!

Yes! THAT Kraftwerk!

Behind the music. Ralf and Florian formed Kraftwerk in 1970, working with other musicians at the time. Their big breakthrough was the 1974 album “Autobahn,” which would set the standard for their future albums… and the electronic/dance music to come. Before “Autobahn,” Kraftwerk was a “krautrock” band; A band that experimented with various music styles and even some electronics at the time. Two members of Kraftwerk at the time were guitarist Michael Rother and drummer Klaus Dinger, both of whom would form Neu!. “Heavy Metal Kids” features Rother and Dinger along with Ralf and Florian, but it’s not the only tune they play on. There’s a rare album on the net where Kraftwerk rocks out to challenge Sabbath.

K4: Bremen Radio 1971. Live at Gondel Kino, Bremen, Germany, June 25, 1971. This is an apparently rare live recording of the band that hasn’t been released… until now.
From BigO Worldwide:

“There isn’t any extra information about this unofficial release either in the liner notes or on the interweb thing - however, as you listen it becomes obvious that this is indeed a recording of the rather short-lived lineup of Kraftwerk that includes Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger in its ranks! That’s right - Neu! as part of Kraftwerk!!!

“It’s basically a whole CD of extended “side-long” jams in the style of the first Kraftwerk albums performed in front of a small but enthusiastic audience and broadcast on Bremen Radio in 1971. The members of Neu! really take a forward role here, with Rother’s guitar driving things for most of the time and sounding quite rocking, with glimpses of his future soaring melodic sound in the extended jam passages. The guitar and drums are backed up by synth and I believe organ bass, with notable exceptions of flute taking the forefront on the great version of Ruckzack (from the first Kraftwerk LP) and is it distorted electric violin on K4? Maybe just Rother taking a violin bow to his guitar strings! Proto-Kraftwerk and proto-Neu! It’s exciting stuff, and on top of that the sound quality is excellent - a professional radio recording.

“How has this recording not become better known over the past 35 years since it was made?! I don’t know. It appears to be a newly released CDR edition with good-quality (but privately printed) packaging. Maybe it has stayed in the Radio Bremen archives until now? If you’re sceptical about the authenticity I’m sure a listen will persuade you… and hearing someone in the crowd shout “Michael!” in the last second of the recording is the icing on the cake.” - Little Bear [who shared the recording on the internet]

Proto-Kraftwerk and proto-Neu? After hearing parts of the tunes, I was thinking “proto-industrial metal.” Knowing how Kraftwerk pioneered electronic music, hearing what could be the prototype of industrial metal bands like KMFDM, Nine Inch Nails, and Orgy is just… WOAH!!!!!!

Various reports between 23-Jan-08 and 04-Feb-08 have the nets buzzing with conspiracy theories. Over that period, there have been five underwater cables cut or damaged. Here are some of the details:

23-Jan-08: A FALCON cable near Bandar Abbas in Iran was cut. There were no initial reports of the damage at the time; I found out about it from Wikipedia of all places!

30-Jan: Two cables, SEA-ME-WE 4 and FLAG Telecom, are cut in separate incidents near Alexandria, Egypt and Marseilles, France. Wide net disruption in the Middle East and India reported. New York Times report.

01-Feb: The FACLON cable suffers a second cutting, this time 56 km from Dubai.

03-Feb: Qtel reported that a cable called DOHA-HALOUL connecting Qatar to the United Arab Emirates had been damaged.

04-Feb: SEA-ME-WE-4 suffers a second cut near Malaysia.

The casualty count so far is five cuts in four cables in six days.

Additional information can be found at Khaleej Times Online.

Mermaids with scissors? Cables, even underwater ones, are bound to fail sooner or later. But the rate of failures and who is being affected has some calling conspiracy. Here’s what is being claimed so far:

Anchors away… the wrong way. The two simultaneous cable cuts were first attributed to ship’s anchors. Egypt, however, reportedly has evidence to the contrary:
ITP.net report:

Egypt’s Transport Ministry said footage recorded by onshore video cameras of the location of the cables shows no maritime traffic in the area when the cables were damaged.

“The ministry’s maritime transport committee reviewed footage covering the period of 12 hours before and 12 hours after the cables were cut and no ships sailed the area,” a statement by the Communications Ministry said.

“The area is also marked on maps as a no-go zone and it is therefore ruled out that the damage to the cables was caused by ships.”

One conspiracy disproved…

Mother nature on PMS. It’s possible storms in the area(s) may have generated underwater currents strong enough to snap the cables. Some people believe that sharks may be chewing on the lines, being confused by electromagnetic fields around the cables.

Probable, but I have doubts…

Information warfare. Perhaps the most likely answer may be Iran.
From Arabian Business.com:

The location of the breaks and short space of time in which they have happened has sparked fears the cables were intentionally damaged by the US and Israel to deprive Iran of internet access.
…
“Clearly Iran, who was most affected, would gain nothing from such an action and is perhaps the target of those responsible,” said another reader.
…
It is not clear how badly Iran’s internet access has been affected by the cable breaks.

The Iranian embassy in Abu Dhabi told ArabianBusiness.com that “everything is fine”, but internet connectivity reports on the web, citing a router in Tehran, appear to indicate that there is currently no connection to the outside world.

Unfortunately, India is America’s outsourced call center and was affected as well. Cutting the cables would have a negative effect on companies, and the government does not want to make their corporate masters angry.

There are also theories that certain agencies cut the cables to stop file sharing, and a YouTube video proclaiming this as a Neo-Con pretext to more Mid-East wars to make up for Duh’bya’s failures in Iraq.

The TRUTH is out there. Maybe. It’s going to take a couple of weeks before the cables are repaired and service is fully restored. Maybe the truth of how and why the cables were cut will be found out. Until then, the conspiracies are going to fly.