WikiLeaks has released the final text of the TPP’s intellectual property rights chapter and it is absolutely terrifying.

Frank Koch

June 26, 2014 ·

 

Trans-Pacific Partnership (NAFTA on Steroids) Threatens Sovereignty

The TPP is "NAFTA on steroids" and will do even greater damage to the economy and sovereignty of the United States. By Joe Wolverton, II, J.D.

thenewamerican.com

...

Fight for the Future

 

 

 

Last week, WikiLeaks released the final text of the TPP’s intellectual property rights chapter and it is absolutely terrifying.

These are just a few of its most dangerous pieces:

• Compel ISPs to take down websites without any sort of court order, just like SOPA. (Appendix Section I)
• Extend the US’s copyright regime to require copyrights stand for life plus 70 years, preventing anyone from using works that belong in the public domain. (Article QQ.G.6)
• Criminalize whistleblowing by extending trade secrets laws without any mandatory exemptions for whistleblowers or investigative journalists. (QQ.H.8)
• End anonymity online by forcing every domain name to be associated with a real name and address. (Article QQ.C.12)
• Make it illegal to unlock, modify, or generally tinker with a device you own. (Article QQ.G.10)
• Export the US’s broken copyright policies to the rest of the world without expanding any of the free speech protections, like fair use. (Article QQ.G.17)

The worst part is that this is just one of the TPP’s 30 chapters.

The final text confirms our worst fears — click here to take action demanding Congress vote NO on the TPP.

 

For years, governments have held critics of the massive Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement in a perfect catch 22. Officials brushed off public outcry and concern by claiming that the dissenters didn’t have all the facts.

This was by design—the 12 country trade deal was negotiated entirely behind closed doors by industry lobbyists and government appointees, and even now the text of the agreement is still classified.

But late last week, WikiLeaks released the final text of the Intellectual Property chapter, meaning those excuses won’t work anymore.

We’re planning to go all out against the TPP, but the first step is to make sure Congress knows just how many people oppose the TPP.

Click here to take action demanding Congress vote NO on the TPP.

 

Taking action today is just the beginning, because if all we do is send emails and make phone calls, Congress is not going to reject the TPP. Too many giant industries are seriously invested in making sure Congress ratifies the TPP.

If we’re going to win, we need to go big. Which is exactly what we’re going to do.

So take action right now. Contact your Congresspeople now and tell them to vote against the TPP. Then get ready to do more because we’re going to unleash some of our strongest campaigns ever.

Already we have plans to work with hundreds of different groups as a massive coalition to fight the TPP, coordinate gigantic on-the-ground protests in key cities across the country, and produce compelling content to spread the word to as many different audiences as possible just what is at stake in the TPP.

To do all that, we need your help — if you can, pledge to chip in $5 every month between now and when the TPP fight ends so that we can run our biggest, boldest, and best campaign yet.

Thanks for all you do,

Charlie

P.S. Want to read the text of the chapter for yourself? Check it out on WikiLeaks here, or read their overview of it here. It’s long and complicated, so maybe you'll see something that we didn't. If you do, send us an email.

David Noyes

January 15, 2014 ·

*KILL THE TPP!!!*
Excellent!:
— Noam Chomsky has joined the chorus decrying the TPP, which has very little to do with free trade and is really about limiting regulation, helping corporate interests and imposing fiercer standards of intellectual property (to, again, largely benefit corporate interests).
... See More

 

Noam Chomsky: Obama Trade Deal A 'Neoliberal Assault' To Further Corporate 'Domination'

The Obama administration's Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal is an "assault," on working people intended to further corporate "domination," according to author…

huffingtonpost.com

 

Elizabeth Mueller

January 11, 2014 ·

Let me give you an example of what TPP could allow:
You are an independent journalist or blogger. You need content. Suddenly, all the pictures, videos, memes and articles become "private property." You want to cite the video, where the now former NRC chairman turns whistleblower and says he's adamantly anti-nuclear, after witnessing the damage at Fukushima. You can't. A major news outlet owns the press conference video footage. You place a stupid cat meme on your page, withou...
See More

 

 

 

Frank Koch

January 18, 2014 ·

A chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership released by WikiLeaks reveals potential violations of applicable U.S. environmental standards.

 

Leaked TPP Environment Chapter Shows Obama Betrayal of Greens

A chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership released by WikiLeaks reveals potential violations of applicable U.S. environmental standards. By Joe Wolverton, II, J.D.

thenewamerican.com

 

Jennifer Hibberd

January 17, 2014 · Portland, OR ·

 

The story the news is finally talking about

Ed Schultz led the coverage over the dangers of TPP. Finally, Congress and the media begin to realize the importance of stopping this bill. Larry Cohen joins.

msnbc.com

 

Ian Kevin Draper

January 16, 2014 ·

‪#‎AceSecurityNews‬ says latest information and opinions from RT on the release of the “TTPP Uncovered: WikiLeaks releases draft of highly-secretive multi-national trade deal” documents together with download at this link PDF
Published time: November 13, 2013 17:36
Edited time: November 15, 2013 09:36
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#TPP Uncovered: WikiLeaks Releases Draft of Highly-Secretive Multi-National Trade Deal

#AceSecurityNews says latest information from RT on the release of the "TTPP Uncovered: WikiLeaks releases draft of highly-secretive multi-national trade…

acenewsservices.com

 

 

Joseph McDaniel

January 10, 2014 ·

Chelsea Manning will not receive clemency from the United States military, says the US Army

Army rejects clemency for Chelsea Manning

Published time: April 14, 2014 17:14
Edited time: April 14, 2014 17:48

Chelsea Manning, formerly known as Bradley (Reuters/Gary Cameron)

WikiLeaks source Chelsea Manning will not receive clemency from the United States military, the US Army said on Monday afternoon.
A news release circulated by the US Army Military District of Washington early Monday confirmed that the Pentagon official who could have agreed to reduce or eliminate the sentence imposed last year on the former intelligence analyst declined to do so. The case will next automatically be sent to the Army Court of Criminals Appeals.
According to the press release, the convening authority, Maj. Gen. Jeffrey S. Buchanan, approved the findings and sentence adjudged at last summer’s court-martial, in turn rejecting requests for Manning to receive clemency.
As convening authority, Buchanan could have elected to disapprove of Army Col. Denise Lind’s decision last summer to sentence Manning to 35 years in prison after the analyst admitted to sharing a trove of classified military documents with the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks. Lind sentenced the solder to 35 years in prison and demoted her to private first class after finding the soldier guilty of multiple counts, including espionage, theft and computer fraud.

Read More Here
.....

Chelsea Manning's 35-year prison sentence upheld by US army general

Decision to uphold findings of Manning's 2013 court-martial will automatically send case to the army court of criminal appeals

• Reuters in New York
• theguardian.com, Monday 14 April 2014 16.46 EDT

Manning pleaded guilty to 10 charges but was convicted last year on 20 counts, including espionage and theft. Photo: Ho/AFP/Getty Images

A US army general has denied clemency for Chelsea Manning and upheld the former soldier's 35-year prison sentence for providing secret files to WikiLeaks in the biggest breach of classified materials in US history, the army said Monday.
Major General Jeffrey S Buchanan's decision to uphold the findings of Manning's 2013 court-martial will automatically send the case to the army court of criminal appeals, an Army statement said.
The soldier, formerly known as Bradley Manning, was working as an intelligence analyst in Baghdad in 2010 when she gave the pro-transparency site WikiLeaks 700,000 documents, videos, diplomatic cables and battlefield accounts.
The trove included a 2007 video of a US Apache helicopter firing at suspected insurgents in Iraq, killing a dozen people, including two Reuters news staffers.

Read More Here
.....

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How a teenage misfit became the keeper of Julian Assange's deepest secrets - only to betray him

 

Rolling Stone

 The WikiLeaks Mole

Siggi Thordarson with Julian Assange in London 2011.

Allen Clark

By David Kushner

January 6, 2014 9:00 AM ET

On a recent frigid night near Reykjavik, Iceland, Sigurdur "Siggi" Thordarson slips into a bubbling geothermal pool at a suburban swim club. The cherubic, blond 21-year-old, who has been called everything in the press from "attention seeker" to "traitor" to "psychopath," ends many of his days here, where, like most places around the city, he's notorious. But even at a spa, he can find only the briefest moment of relaxation. Soon, the local prosecutor who is trying him for leaking financial records joins him in the tub, and Siggi quickly has to flee to another pool. "How does it feel to be the most dangerous man in Iceland?" a bather shouts across the steam.
Julian Assange: The Rolling Stone Interview
In person, Siggi's doughy shape and boyish smile make him seem less than menacing – unless you're another one of the world's most dangerous men, Julian Assange. Four years ago, just as WikiLeaks was winning international notoriety, the then-17-year-old hacking prodigy became Assange's youngest and most trusted sidekick. "It was like Batman and Robin," says Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a former WikiLeaks volunteer and member of the Icelandic parliament. But as Assange became more embattled and besieged, the protégé turned on his mentor in the most shocking of ways: becoming the first FBI informant inside the group.
Siggi's story of international espionage and teenage high-roller antics plays like James Bond meets Superbad, starring a confounding mash-up of awkward man-child and balls-out tech savant. And his tale reveals not only the paranoia and strife within WikiLeaks, but just how far the feds were willing to go to get Assange.
Siggi still lives with his parents in a nondescript high-rise, sitting at his computer in a bedroom lined with stuffed animals, including an orangutan-size Garfield he bought for $2,000. But his jet-black Mercedes ML350 is parked outside, which, along with his recent conviction for sexual misconduct against a 17-year-old boy (he says the relationship was consensual), speaks to his bizarre double life.
The Trials of Bradley Manning
The revelation of Siggi's role as an FBI snitch has polarized WikiLeaks insiders. When I met with WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson (Assange declined to talk for this story), he grew red in the face, dismissing Siggi as "a pathological liar," a party line echoed by the WikiLeaks faithful. "It all sounds rather absurd," Hrafnsson says, "to go and to spend all this time analyzing the absolute bullshit that is flowing out of this young man, who is so troubled that he should be hospitalized."
While other WikiLeaks insiders also question Siggi's credibility, they insist that his story can't be discounted, and there's more to it than the organization is letting on. Tangerine Bolen, founder of the whistle-blowing advocacy organization Revolution­Truth, which used to work closely with WikiLeaks, is among those who say the group's efforts to discredit Siggi are "patently false. They're scared. The fact is Siggi played a key role in the organization and was very close to Julian."
The truth, it seems, may be held in the leaks. Siggi has provided Rolling Stone with more than a terabyte of secret files he claims to have taken from WikiLeaks before he left in November 2011 and gave to the FBI: thousands of pages of chat logs, videos, tapped phone calls, government documents and more than a few bombshells from the organization's most heated years. They're either the real thing, or the most elaborate lie of the digital age.
Jacob Applebaum: The American WikiLeaks Hacker
Assange himself validated the importance of Siggi's documents when he filed an affidavit late this past summer asserting that "the FBI illegally acquired stolen organisational and personal data belonging to WikiLeaks, me and other third parties in Denmark in March 2012" and that the FBI "was attempting to entrap me through Sigurdur Thordarson."
Whatever their origins, the SiggiLeaks are a deep and revealing portal into one of the most guarded and influential organizations of the 21st century – and the extreme measures its embattled leader is willing to take. Of all Assange's allies who've come and gone, few served him as faithfully as Siggi, or betrayed him so utterly. "One thing is sure," Siggi tells me in his thick Icelandic accent, as the vapors from the thermal pool rise around him. "I have not lived a life like a teenager."
Like Assange and so many gifted hackers, Siggi had an isolated childhood. The son of a hairdresser and a paint-company sales manager, he grew up with his little sister in a middle­class suburb of Reykjavik. Though puckish and bright, he was bored by school, alienated from his classmates and dreamed of a life beyond bourgeois Nordic comfort. "When I was, like, 12 years old, I wished for a couple of things," he tells me as we drive one afternoon past some lava fields outside the capital. "I wished to be rich; I wished to be a famous guy; I wished to live an adventureful life."
He found the excitement he craved in computers, and at age 12 he says he hacked into his first website, a local union's home page, which he replaced with a picture of "a big fluffy monkey." The experience empowered him. "When you do something like that, you feel invincible," he says, "and if you can do that, what else can you do?"
He found out two years later, when, on a plane back from a family vacation, he fixed a laptop for a businessman sitting next to him. The executive was so impressed by his skills that he offered him a job at the Icelandic financial firm Milestone: scrubbing computers of sensitive documents. Siggi figures the company trusted him with such data because he was only 14 and must have thought, as he says, "I wouldn't understand what I was supposed to delete." Plus, the pay dwarfed that of his paper route.
WikiLeaks' Greatest Hits
Curious about the files he was erasing, he'd copy them and study them at night. What he eventually discovered astonished him: Employees of Milestone seemed guilty of large-scale corruption in collusion with local politicians. At this time, in 2009, Iceland was reeling from the worldwide financial crisis, and Siggi believed the people deserved to know the role of Milestone and their dirty politicians – even if that meant leaking the files. "Someone has to do it," he thought, "and why not me?"
In the fall, Siggi says he brought more than 600 gigabytes of Milestone data to the Icelandic newspaper Dagbladid Vísir, making front-page news and leading to investigations against the politicians and businessmen he exposed. Siggi believed in the importance of exposing the corruption he describes as "illegal as it gets." With his identity still secret, he kept on leaking to other media outlets until, for reasons he never learned, his childhood friend outed him, a betrayal that changed him. "I literally just stopped believing in humanity," he says. "Since then, I just basically stopped having feelings."
But after being arrested and splashed across the news, he found a powerful connection in Kristinn Hrafnsson. A well-known TV reporter in Reykjavik at the time, Hrafnsson considered Siggi's leaks to be "quite significant" and worthy of an introduction to another up-and-coming whistle-blower, Julian Assange, who was speaking at the University of Iceland. Though WikiLeaks had already exposed death squads in Kenya and financial malfeasance in the Swiss bank Julius Baer, the group was still largely unknown. But at the panel, Siggi found, to his surprise, that Assange was well aware of his work – he even chastised the reporter who revealed Siggi's name in the Milestone leak. "He was basically just condemning the guy, sayingouting whistle­blowers is wrong," recalls Siggi, who reveled in the support.
The bond between the two was immediate. Assange too had been arrested for hacking when he was a young man in Australia. He also had a son, Daniel, who was roughly Siggi's age, whom he had little contact. "I think Julian saw himself in Siggi," says Jónsdóttir. "Julian felt an immediate sympathy toward the kid."
After the panel, Siggi says he took Assange to Sea Bar, a small, rustic restaurant on the water. Over lobster soup and whale steak, they spoke about politics, hacking and their shared sense of purpose in exposing the secrets of the elite. Assange struck Siggi as someone with the courage to take on anyone. "He's the kind of activist that does the thing that has to be done," Siggi tells me. After talking for a few hours, Assange took out a small metal box. "Have you ever seen this before?" he said.
Assange cracked open the container and revealed three phones inside. "These are encrypted cellphones," he said. "I'm going to give you one. Just keep it on at all times so I can communicate with you, day and night."

Read More Here

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An Icelandic MP says she received a tip-off, from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, that Britain spied on Iceland while wrestling to rescue its citizens' cash from collapsed Icelandic banks

Britain ‘snooped’ on Icelandic officials’ emails to recover cash from broken banks

Published time: November 10, 2013 12:06

AFP Photo / Nicholas Kamm

An Icelandic MP says Britain spied on Iceland while wrestling to rescue its citizens' cash from collapsed Icelandic banks after the financial crisis. Birgitta Jónsdóttir claims she received a tip-off from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
Jónsdóttir, who represents Iceland's Pirate Party, maintains that the UK's intelligence agencies systematically intercepted messages sent by Icelandic negotiators when Britain tried to recover savers’ cash held in the country’s banks that went bankrupt.
Jónsdóttir, a prominent WikiLeaks supporter, said that she was tipped off to the spying in 2010 by Assange, Iceland's Visir newspaper reported.
Having received the tip-off, she warned members of Iceland’s negotiating team not to send emails to each other.
"The UK authorities had very good access to everything that was going on between members of the team. It is the role of intelligence, for example MI5, to spy on other countries, especially if it concerns their national interests. Their duty was to gather information and intelligence about us, and the duty of the Icelandic government was to do everything to protect us against such espionage," Jónsdóttir told the newspaper.
The revelation could reignite tensions between the UK and Iceland, which were stoked in 2008 when the UK government used anti-terrorism legislation to freeze an Icelandic bank’s assets in the UK. The British Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time, Alastair Darling, seized the funds of Landsbanki’s Internet bank, Icesave, to protect UK depositors’ money after the Icelandic government reacted to Landsbanki’s toxic debts by nationalizing the bank.
Last week, Britain got involved in another major spy scandal when it was reported that the UK has been allegedly using its Berlin embassy to spy on the nearby Bundestag, as well as the office of Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Read More Here

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Obama Unmasked: The Total Surveillance State

By Megan Cornish

Global Research, August 22, 2013

The president helped end the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy that locked LGBT military service members in the closet. During his 2012 campaign, he reduced deportations of undocumented youth who came to the U.S. as children. But, with few other exceptions, his actions have served the wealthy elite and expanded the attacks on working people pushed by G. W. Bush.

Immigration: the Iron Curtain Border

Obama has deported more immigrants than predecessor Bush. “We put more boots on the ground on the southern border than at any time in our history,” boasts his official website.

 His “reform” proposal includes more border militarization — to be implemented before a supposed path to citizenship opens up for undocumented immigrants. That path is barricaded with high fines and fees, and years of waiting, with social services denied in the meantime.
His mandatory electronic employment verification system, E-Verify, would require all U.S. workers to prove authorization to work. In other words, it is a national ID system.

Low-income “guest workers,” would be deported after 60 days of unemployment, virtually guaranteeing most would be too fearful and desperate to risk their jobs by speaking up for their rights or engaging in union organizing.

 Persecuting whistleblowers and activists

Obama has prosecuted more government whistleblowers than any other president — and the list is growing as he ramps up his war on dissent. His take-no-prisoners stance has fallen on Jeremy Hammond, facing up to 10 years for hacking into the website of security contractor Stratfor and giving the lowdown to the WikiLeaks website. Journalist Barrett Brown faces up to 105 years for reporting on exposures on private intelligence firms by the hacker group Anonymous. Environmental activist Tim DeCristopher served 21 months for civil disobedience that saved 22,000 acres of wilderness from illegal sale. See this issue’s article on Pfc. Manning and Edward Snowden for details.

Pre-emptive strikes against “troublemakers” are common. In May 2012, nine arrests were made of activists preparing for anti-NATO demonstrations in Chicago. Most were baseless, while four involved cases of entrapment by undercover cops who urged the use of incendiary devices.
Civil rights and people’s attorney Lynne Stewart was convicted of “material support to terrorism” for the high crime of passing a press release to the media for a client. Her original sentence of 28 months was extended to 10 years — at age 72 — at the urging of administration officials. Now the Federal Bureau of Prisons has denied her petition for compassionate release for treatment of an advancing cancer. For a link to her petition see www.lynnestewart.org, and see the FS article Release Lynne Stewart for words from her.
Two Somali women who sent aid back home were similarly accused of giving “material support to terrorism,” and sentenced to lengthy prison terms. The group they worked with was designated a terrorist organization by Obama’s regime after the fact.
Mumia Abu-Jamal, the Black radical journalist falsely convicted of murder after a racist trial in 1982, has consistently been denied justice in state and federal courts. Obama’s Attorney General, Eric Holder, has upheld this legalized lynching by refusing to intervene or urge the release of Mumia for his long unjust imprisonment, much of it in solitary confinement. Sign the petition here.


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ELLSBERG WARNS: 'BEGINNINGS OF POLICE STATE'

Hot News 2

Published on Aug 22, 2013

The NSA surveillance of millions of emails and phone calls. The dogged pursuit of whistleblower Edward Snowden across the globe, regardless of the diplomatic fallout. And the sentencing of Bradley Manning to 35 years in prison for giving a cache of government files to the website WikiLeaks. Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg sees these events as signs that the United States is becoming a police state.

"We have not only the capability of a police state, but certain beginnings of it right now," Ellsberg said. "And I absolutely agree with Edward Snowden. It's worth a person's life, prospect of assassination, or life in prison or life in exile -- it's worth that to try to restore our liberties and make this a democratic country."
Ellsberg was a military analyst with the RAND Corporation in 1969 when he secretly copied thousands of classified documents about U.S. decision-making during the Vietnam War. In 1971, he leaked the files (known as the Pentagon Papers) to The New York Times and 18 other newspapers.
Although the Nixon administration tried to prevent the publication of the files, the Supreme Court ruled in New York Times Co. v. United States that the newspaper could continue publishing the files.
Ellsberg was later tried on 12 felony counts under the Espionage Act of 1917, and faced a possible sentence of 115 years in prison. His case was dismissed in 1973 on the grounds of gross governmental misconduct.
As a candidate in 2008, Barack Obama praised instances of whistle-blowing as "acts of courage and patriotism." Since becoming president, however, his administration has charged more people under the Espionage Act than all other presidents combined.

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