wikileaks round up

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I’m afraid another post about wikileaks, even though really not much has been happening except for script kiddies running badly written code to stick it to the man (If you were a nasty person that’s just the sort of program to shove a back door into). The script kiddies at the behest of anonymous* have been targeting anyone anonymous has decided is anti-wikileaks, which is probably the best bet if you’re twelve. Adults might consider writing and threatening the companies to stop using their services (oddly past campaigns have suggested that commercial ventures care quite a bit about publicity and things hurting their profits). other strategems might include suing companies for suspending contractual services or highlighting/hosting some of the leaked material on a robust site like oh say that of another government. That sort of response would probably work quite well especially if it turns out that some companies jumped the gun and hadn’t actually been told not to deal with wikileaks, or were quite happy to sell the Wikileaks documents after cutting WikiLeaks off. Perhaps Hillary Clinton will help with tools to circumvent politically motivated censorship.

The most damaging think still to come out of this latest act in the wikileaks drama is that the state doesn’t like the people much, and will react very aggressively to anything which threatens the states secrets and control structures – but surely we knew that already? Nice to have such public evidence I guess.

When considering Mr Assagne’s current plight in jail it’s worth keeping in mind that despite Wikileaks collecting money expressly for the purpose they’ve not chipped in a penny yet for the defence fund of Bradley Manning the US army private actually responsible for the leaks. Meanwhile of course there is still the question of where the balance between transparency and the need for privacy lies and long term should that be decided by unaccountable individuals operating by secret rules in cohorts with profit driven media organizations (According to Channel 4 news the schedule for releasing material on Wikileaks is decided at least in part by discussion with partner media organizations)

* Given the iconography I’ve used previously and the name of this site, you might be led to believe that I’m a fan of anonymous – you’d be very mistaken.

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Wikileaks again

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Following the on going saga of the actions taken against both Wikileaks and Julian Assange personally, he has now been arrested and denied bail despite turning up to court voluntarily and realistically probably not being much of a flight risk. Which does make one wonder about the reasons for such action when serveral people offered surety and to cover the bail. The final charges do seem to potentially be quite serious if one can trust any of the reports one hears both from prior to his actually being charged and subsequently due to the difference in how offences are labelled here and in Sweden. The confusion being made murkier by the paper that initially reported the leaked charges also employing Mr Assange as a columnist, which as observed at the Ministry of Truth does cause one to pause and wonder where their leaked and confusing information came from.

But beyond Mr Assanges personal plight, and the unusual and troubling way in which both he and Wikileaks are being hounded by various states remain pertinent questions as to WikiLeaks own agenda. It is also worth remembering that they’re not the only player in the publishing leaked information game, and with (like so many wiki sites) so much tied into Mr Assange as a “celebrity” it may not be the best bet due to it’s own lack of transparency

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Unsettled science

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It would seem that the settled climate change science which persuaded our great and glorious leaders to commit to legally binding CO2 reductions isn’t quite as settled as it seems as new research from NASA suggests that doubling CO2 won’t even raise the temperature by 2 degrees. It would seem from the headlines that many of the climate change models forgot that plants quite like CO2 and would grow a bit better and this would have an impact on climate change.

“In particular, green plants can be expected to grow as they find it easier to harvest carbon from the air around them using energy from the sun: thus introducing a negative feedback into the warming/carbon process. Most current climate models don’t account for this at all, according to Bounoua. Some do, but they fail to accurately simulate the effects – they don’t allow for the fact that plants in a high-CO2 atmosphere will “down-regulate” and so use water more efficiently.”

Good job that in these times of cuts backs and austerity that we’re not spending money on it and that we’re quite sure as to how we should calculate our carbon use, wouldn’t do to be pissing more money away due to bad science and ill thought out targets after all.

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