Hackers strike Zimbabwean regime sites

Activists target government sites
Key websites of the Tunisian government have been taken offline by a group that recently attacked sites and services perceived to be anti-Wikileaks. Sites belonging to the Ministry of Industry and the Tunisian Stock Exchange were amongst seven targeted by the Anonymous group since Monday. Other sites have been defaced for what the group calls "an outrageous level of Censorship" in the country. The group also recently targeted the websites of the Zimbabwean government. What is Anonym...

Tunisian govt website defaced in Anonymous attack on Internet censorship
Stumble This! "We will use this brief span of attention we've captured to deliver a clear and present message which we hope shall never be forgot," the Open Letter stated. "Remember, remember, that the tighter you squeeze the more your citizens shall rebel against your rule. Like a fistful of sand in the palm of your grip, the more you squeeze your citizens the more that they will flow right out of your hand. The more you censor your own citizens the more they shall know about you and what you...

Zimbabwe 2011 election may be postponed: report
Harare | Sun Jan 2, 2011 6:51am EST Harare (Reuters) - Zimbabwe is likely to postpone a parliamentary election that President Robert Mugabe's party wanted by mid-year in order to allow completion of Constitutional Reforms, a state-owned newspaper reported on Sunday. Mugabe's ZANU-PF party endorsed plans to call early polls two weeks ago, despite strong opposition from rivals that the political climate was not right for a free and fair vote. The Sunday Mail newspaper, which is tightly controll...

Visitors snap up 100 trillion Zimbabwe bank notes
An old one hundred Trillion Zimbabwean dollar note on top of a pile of other old Zimbabwean notes of various denominations in Harare, Thursday, Dec. 30, 2010. The old note has become the Hottest seller to western tourists visiting Zimbabwe. Souvenir hunters are snapping up the last supplies of the old defunct note which sells for an average of $5 (3.80 euro) depending on its condition. Western visitors to Zimbabwe are snapping up old, defunct Zimbabwe bank notes, preferring them to some traditi...

Visitors snap up 100 trillion Zimbabwe bank notes
HARARE, Zimbabwe - Western visitors to Zimbabwe are looking for zeros. They're snapping up old, defunct Zimbabwe bank notes, most notably the one hundred Trillion Zimbabwe dollar bill, as an economic souvenir. The one hundred Trillion Zimbabwe dollar bill, which at 100 followed by 12 zeros is the highest denomination, now sells for $5, depending on its condition. That bill and others — among them millions, billions and trillions, were abandoned nearly two years ago, when the American...

Visitors snap up 100 trillion Zimbabwe bank notes
HARARE, Zimbabwe — Western visitors to Zimbabwe are looking for zeros. They’re snapping up old, defunct Zimbabwe bank notes, most notably the one hundred Trillion Zimbabwe dollar bill, as an economic souvenir. The one hundred Trillion Zimbabwe dollar bill, which at 100 followed by 12 zeros is the highest denomination, now sells for $5, depending on its condition. That bill and others — among them millions, billions and trillions, were abandoned nearly two years ago, when th...

WikiLeaks' collateral damage in Zimbabwe | James Richardson
But now, with the recent release of sensitive diplomatic cables, Wikileaks may have committed its own collateral Murder, upending the precarious balance of power in a fragile African state and signing the death warrant of its pro-western premier. Zimbabwe's Morgan Tsvangirai's call to public service has been a tortured one, punctuated by death and indignity. His numerous arrests and brushes with death began in 1997, when he emerged as the unlikely face of opposition to President Robert Mugabe. T...

How Wikileaks is helping Robert Mugabe's reign of terror
Without question, Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe is one of the biggest monsters alive. For three decades, Zimbabwe's been in the grips of his corrupt reign of terror. And now the Guardian explains how Wikileaks may be responsible for helping keep keep the country in Mugabe's murderous vice. His numerous arrests and brushes with death began in 1997, when he emerged as the unlikely face of opposition to President Robert Mugabe. That year, Mugabe's henchmen nearly threw Tsvangirai from the window of his ...

Zimbabwe to combat attacks by cyber activists
A minister says Zimbabwe is making efforts to increase security on its government websites to prevent cyber attacks. On its website, a cyber Activist group called Anonymous says it brought down Zimbabwe websites last week to Protest the government's Censorship of free press and Wikileaks cables. President Robert Mugabe's wife has sued a newspaper that published Wikileaks reports implicating her in illegal diamond deals. Zimbabwe's IT minister said Monday that they are "dealing with" threats by t...

WikiLeaks may lead to execution of pro-democracy Zimbabwean
Africa has been cursed by many psychotic dictators. Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe rules with the cruelty reminiscent of Uganda's Idi Amin added with a dash of the kleptomania of Gabon's lesser-known Omar Bongo. One of the overlooked stories of the Wikileaks Scandal is the "outing" of one of Mugabe's democratic-minded political opponents--who may end up being executed because of Julian Assange's recklessness and imperiousness. Speaking on the Today Show about the possibility that local sympathizers t...

Wikileaks: Ahmadinjead Was Slapped in Meeting
The Huffington Post reports: According to a recently released cable obtained by Wikileaks, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was slapped in the face by Revolutionary Guard Chief of Staff Mohammed Ali Jafari. According to the cable, Ahmadinejad surprised the Supreme National Security Council by taking a liberal posture on opposition Protests. The president allegedly argued that people felt “suffocated,” and that allowing more social and personal freedoms, as well as more freedom...

South Africa ready to throw out 1.2m who fled Mugabe
Almost 255,000 Zimbabweans applied to legalise their residency before the deadline on December 31, South Africa's government said while ruling out an extension to the process. A conservative estimate by the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg is that there are 1.5 million Zimbabweans in South Africa, Kaajal Ramjathan-Keogh, the head of the Refugee and migrant rights program for Lawyers for Human Rights, said. ''This leaves a very significant number of people unprotected,'' she said o...

Yet another conspiracy theory
Many Islamist websites have concluded that Jews and/or Israel must be behind the Wikileaks document leak because Israel has emerged almost unscathed from the documents released so far. Why did the documents exposed by WikiLeaks contain so much material about Arab regimes asking the United States to contain Iran’s Nuclear Program? Why was there little material that was embarrassing to Israel? JTA reports that Hizbullah and other Jihadi groups see an Israeli Conspiracy at work. The Jewish news...

Rove Suspected of Role In Swedish WikiLeaks Probe
Source: CTwatchdog Karl Rove’s help for Sweden as it and the Obama Administration investigate Wikileaks founder Julian Assange could be the latest example of the adage, “Politics makes strange bedfellows.” As sex and spy Probes move forward, word is getting out about how Rove, the former Bush White House Strategist, has advised Swedish Prime Minister Fredric Reinfeldt for the past two years. “This all has Karl’s signature,” a reliable political source told me last month in enco

Assange in sights of Congress
Julian Assange ... in southern England last month. Photo: Reuters WASHINGTON: The Republican Party is planning a congressional inquiry into Wikileaks and its founder, Julian Assange. The party, which was due to wrest control of the house today, has included Wikileaks in a list of priorities for investigation. The move is partly political, aimed at the Attorney-General, Eric Holder, who the Republicans claim has been too slow and too weak in reacting to the leaks. Last month he said the Justice D...

Army board to evaluate WikiLeaks suspect
Source: UPI WASHINGTON, Jan. 4 (UPI) -- A soldier suspected of providing classified documents to the Web site Wikileaks will be evaluated by a Mental Health panel, a U.S. Army spokesman said. The spokesman, Lt. Col. Robert Manning, said The Army is assembling a special "706 board" to decide whether Pfc. Bradley Manning is fit to stand trial, The Washington Times reported Tuesday. The Army's Manual for Courts-Martial says the board must answer two questions concerning Pfc. Manning's state of mind...

Does WikiLeaks spell the end of the press as we know it?
The blow absorbed by Veteran journalism in the Wikileaks affair is one of history’s most refreshing defeats. While the rebels stormed the walls, high-flying hysteria broke out in the hallways of the wobbly fortress. “A revolution!” shouted the newspaper editors. “A new contender for the throne, more nimble and sophisticated than we are, has administered a decisive blow. In the office next door, the marketing director was beside himself with pleasure. “Spread the ne...

Germany denies secret spy project with US
Germany's aerospace centre has denied it is working with the US on a $US270 million ($A266 million) high-tech secret spy program, insisting that its plans for a high-resolution optical satellite have purely scientific and security uses. US State Department cables obtained by Wikileaks and revealed by Norwegian daily Aftenposten say Germany joined a partnership with the US to create a satellite spying program that was presented as a commercial enterprise, but is actually run by the German intelli...

Pirate Parties Condemn Violence and Threats Against Wikileaks Staff
In recent weeks, numerous influential members of America's ruling political class have called for the death or Assassination of Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks. A number of chapters of the Pirate Party in Europe have released a statement condemning violence against Wikileaks staff. From the Pirate Party UK: In a joint declaration with other Pirate Parties, today the Pirate Party of the United Kingdom strongly condemns any attacks on Wikileaks infrastructure and more so any attacks on Wikile...

Creeping medievalism
Conservative politics aims to support and preserve the status quo. Reactionary politics aims to restore a bygone status quo. Ever since the early days of the New Deal, leading so-called "conservative" politicians have actually been reactionaries, wanting to take us backwards. The only question is: How far? With the emergence of Torture and the Repeal of habeas corpus under the Bush Administration, the answer seemed fairly clear: at least as far back as the late medieval period, when no one wou...

Just Total Cynical, Hypocritical Business As Usual
I think it’s hilarious that the government-funded Voice of America publishes an article about a Wikileaks-released cable that indicates Israel would have only 10 to 12 minutes warning before an Iranian Rocket Attack while this same government’s State Department (among other government agencies) forbids its employees to read Wikileaks on government computers and the government’s Department of Justice pursues ways to prosecute Wikileaks founder for Espionage and holds in solitar...

WIKILEAKS: Ahmadinejad slapped by head of Revolutionary Guard...
Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was slapped by the head of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, according to the Wikileaks document dump. The Wikileaks document dump continues to kick up surprises. A new diplomatic cable says the head of Iran's Revolutionary Guard smacked President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the face for suggesting easing restrictions on the press. The February 2010 cable, classified secret and puckishly headlined, "He Who Got Slapped," quotes an intelligence source recounting a contenti...

Network Neutrality - A tangled web
FOR a subject that arouses such strong passions, “network neutrality” is fiendishly difficult to pin down. Ask five geeks and you may well be given six definitions of it. The basic concept sounds simple enough: that the Internet’s pipes should show no favours and blindly deliver packets of data from one place to another regardless of their origin, destination or contents. But The Devil is in the detail. What happens for instance if some people want to pay for their data to go f...

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON ON GREECE: RAGING AGAINST THEM. Oz is over with and the Greeks are furious
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON ON Greece: RAGING AGAINST “THEM.” Oz is over with and the Greeks are furious at “them”. Furious in the sense that everyone must be blamed except themselves. So they Protest and demonstrate that they do not wish to stop borrowing money to sustain a lifestyle that they have not earned—but do not wish to cut ties either with their EU beneficiaries and go it alone as in the 1970s. So they...

Obama to increase engagement with Africa in 2011
HONOLULU (AP) — President Obama is quietly but strategically stepping up his outreach to Africa, using this year to increase his engagement with a continent that is personally meaningful to him and important to U.S. interests. Expectations in Africa spiked after the election of an American president with a Kenyan father. But midway through his term, Mr. Obama's agenda for Africa has taken a back seat to other foreign-policy goals, such as winding down the Iraq War, fighting the Taliban in ...