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Twitter suspends British journalist critical of NBC's Olympics coverage

Ed Pilkington
The Guardian
Tue, 31 Jul 2012 04:10 UTC
Twitter has brought down a hail of critical tweeting on its own head by suspending the account of a British newspaper's Los Angeles correspondent following his acerbic reporting of NBC's coverage of the Olympics.

The social media network hummed with the indignation of thousands of its users after the Twitter feed of Guy Adams of the Independent disappeared. The paper's deputy editor, Archie Bland, confirmed the suspension, calling it "heavy-handed".

NBC said it had complained to Twitter after Adams published the email address of one of its senior bosses. "We filed a complaint with Twitter because a user tweeted the personal information of one of our executives. According to Twitter, this is a violation of their privacy policy. Twitter alone levies discipline."

Rachael Horwitz, a spokeswoman for the San Francisco-based firm, confirmed that it does not "actively monitor" users' accounts, and added that it was company policy not to comment on individual users.
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Pirates

Entering the Twilight Zone: Al-Qaeda conquers eastern Syria for Uncle Sam

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad
The Guardian
Mon, 30 Jul 2012 04:01 UTC
Image
© Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty ImagesA member of a jihadist group sprays the slogan 'No Islam without Jihad' in Arabic on the wall at a border crossing with Turkey. These barbarians are about as 'Islamic' as George Bush was 'Christian.'
In his latest exclusive dispatch from Deir el-Zour province, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad meets fighters who have left the Free Syrian Army for the discipline and ideology of global jihad.

As they stood outside the commandeered government building in the town of Mohassen, it was hard to distinguish Abu Khuder's men from any other brigade in the Syrian civil war, in their combat fatigues, T-shirts and beards.

But these were not average members of the Free Syrian Army. Abu Khuder and his men fight for al-Qaida. They call themselves the ghuraba'a, or "strangers", after a famous jihadi poem celebrating Osama bin Laden's time with his followers in the Afghan mountains, and they are one of a number of jihadi organisations establishing a foothold in the east of the country now that the conflict in Syria has stretched well into its second bloody year.

They try to hide their presence. "Some people are worried about carrying the [black] flags," said Abu Khuder. "They fear America will come and fight us. So we fight in secret. Why give Bashar and the west a pretext?" But their existence is common knowledge in Mohassen. Even passers-by joke with the men about car bombs and IEDs.

Comment: Syria Terrorists Admit France and US Are Supplying Weapons

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Camcorder

Police State: New York Police to Launch Surveillance Software System


My Fox New York
Sat, 28 Jul 2012 10:50 UTC

The NYPD says it will launch an all-seeing "Domain Awareness System" that combines several streams of information to track both criminals and potential terrorists.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly says the city developed the software with Microsoft.

The program combines city-wide video surveillance with law enforcement databases, according to Kelly.

The Domain Awareness System will include technology deployed in public spaces as part of the counterterrorism program of the NYPD counterterrorism bureau, including: NYPD-owned closed circuit television cameras, license plate readers, and other undisclosed domain awareness devices.
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People

Tens of Thousands Flee Syria's Largest City

Bassem Mroue and Zeina Karam
My Way
Mon, 30 Jul 2012 04:19 UTC
Image
© The Associated Press/TurkpixIn this Sunday, July 29, 2012 photo, Free Syrian Army soldiers gather at the border town of Azaz, some 20 miles (32 kilometers) north of Aleppo, Syria.
Bukulmez, Turkey - Smoking a cigarette outside a Turkish hospital near the Syrian border, a man in a gray gown and flip-flops held his sleeping 2-year-old daughter, Aya. On Aya's right eye was a bandage. In her left hand was a chocolate bar.

Aya lost her eye when she was struck by shrapnel from a shell that also killed her 8-month-old brother, Mohammad, and their mother. The father and daughter were among some 200,000 people who the U.N. said late Sunday have fled Syria's largest city, Aleppo, during days of clashes between rebels and the military.

Aleppo residents, some severely wounded, are packing up belongings and loading them onto cars, trucks and even motorcycles to seek temporary shelter in rural villages and schools outside the city and dusty tents across the border in Turkey.

In interviews with The Associated Press, refugees described a city besieged by government troops and beset by incessant shelling. Food supplies and gasoline are running low and black market prices for everyday staples are soaring.

Comment: For a better idea of what is really going on in Syria please read:
Sott Focus: Syria's Bloody CIA Revolution - A Distraction? by Joe Quinn
Sott Focus: One Man's Suicide Bomber - National Security Building Bomb in Damascus and Bourgas Bus Bomb by Joe Quinn
Sott Focus: Reign of Fire: Meteorites, Wildfires, Planetary Chaos and the Sixth Extinction by Joe Quinn and Niall Bradley

For additional information read:
Mossad, Blackwater, CIA Led Operations in Homs
Wikileaks: US-led NATO Troops Operate Inside Syria

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Pirates

'British-born jihadists fighting Assad in Syria' - captured photographer


RT
Mon, 30 Jul 2012 18:26 UTC
Syrian mercenaries
© Reuters / Reuters TVArmed members of the Free Syrian Army are seen in the western border town of Zabadani in this undated still image taken from amateur video obtained by Reuters
Radical Islamists with "British accents" are among the coalition forces looking to topple Bashar Assad, says Jeroen Oerlemans, a photographer who was held hostage in Syria for a week. The UK Foreign Office has launched an investigation.

Oerlemans, a famous Dutch photo journalist, and John Cantlie, another photographer from the UK, were captured by a group of between 30 and 100 anti-Assad fighters when crossing the Syrian border from Turkey last week. They were then blindfolded.

"One of the black jihadists freaked out and shouted: 'These are journalists and now they will see we are preparing an international jihad in this place.'" Oerlemans told NRC Handelsblatt newspaper. He said that none of the fighters was Syrian.

Comment: Or perhaps these are not 'jihadists' - although some may think they are - but mercenaries paid for by agencies of western countries currently waging a proxy war against Syria.

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Camera

Wag the Dog: Austrian Newspaper Uses Photoshop To Make Syria Look Worse

Brian Barrett
Gizmodo
Sun, 29 Jul 2012 18:09 UTC
photoshop Syria
© Kronen Zeitung / European Pressphoto Agency
The Kronen Zeitung is Austria's largest newspaper, with a daily readership of around three million people. Yesterday, those readers were treated to the image on the left of war-torn Aleppo, bombed out and desperate. Except, as one sharp-eyed Redditor points out, that wasn't the scene at all. It was just another Photoshop job.

Just to be clear, the family in the photograph is, in fact, in Syria; the original photo (on the right) came from the European Pressphoto Agency. But merely fleeing a city ravaged by guns and mortars apparently isn't quite dramatic enough on its own. The editors of the Krone - as it's commonly called - needed this baby to sing.

Using Photoshop to make actresses and models look unrealistically attractive is bad enough. Using it to make a part of the world that has enough problems as it is look even more apocalyptic? That's just disgraceful. [Facebook via Reddit]

Comment: No wonder why alternative and independent sources of information have become more and more popular in recent years.

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Magic Wand

Vote for Nonsense: Romney tells Jewish donors that 'culture' and 'providence' are why Israelis are more economically successful than Palestinians

Donald Macintyre
The Independent
Mon, 30 Jul 2012 17:56 UTC
US Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney today ignored the depressive impact of a 43-year occupation by telling Jewish donors to his campaign that "culture" and "providence" were reasons why Israelis were more economically successful than Palestinians.

In terms which outraged Palestinian officials, Mr Romney used a fundraising breakfast in Jerusalem to advance his own explanation for "the dramatically stark difference in economic vitality" between the two economies.

Seated beside the right-wing billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who has indicated he could give up to $100m to the Republican campaign, Mr Romney said he had read books and drawn on his own business experience to understand why the difference is so great.

Comment: That a man capable of such ignorance and idiocy is contending for the presidency of the most powerful country in the world is truly a troubling sign of the times.

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Eye 2

Predatory For-Profit Colleges Pay Executives Based On Corporate Profitability, Not Student Outcomes

Chris Kirkham
The Huffington Post
Sat, 28 Jul 2012 17:24 UTC
ELIJAH CUMMINGS
© Rep. Elijah Cummings
Top executives at major for-profit colleges take in millions of dollars in annual compensation -- primarily from taxpayer subsidies - - yet most of their pay is unrelated to student achievement, according to preliminary findings from a congressional investigation.

The report from Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform committee, found that publicly traded college corporations calculate executive compensation "predominantly on the profitability of their companies rather than the success of their students."

"This is especially troubling given the billions of taxpayer dollars flowing into these institutions and the serious financial risks to students who go through these programs," the report concluded.
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Bad Guys

Academic authoritarians: The perversion of scholarship

Chris Hedges
Truth Dig
Mon, 30 Jul 2012 16:50 UTC
Mr Fish Football Thinker
© Mr Fish
Fraternities, sororities and football, along with other outsized athletic programs, have decimated most major American universities. Scholarship, inquiry, self-criticism, moral autonomy and a search for artistic and esoteric forms of expression - in short, the world of ethics, creativity and ideas - are shouted down by the drunken chants of fans in huge stadiums, the pathetic demands of rich alumni for national championships, and the elitism, racism and rigid definition of gender roles of Greek organizations. These hypermasculine systems perpetuate a culture of conformity and intolerance. They have inverted the traditional values of scholarship to turn four years of college into a mindless quest for collective euphoria and athletic dominance.

There is probably no more inhospitable place to be an intellectual, or a person of color or a member of the LGBT community, than on the campuses of the Big Ten Conference colleges, although the poison of this bizarre American obsession has infected innumerable schools. These environments are distinctly corporate. To get ahead one must get along. The student is implicitly told his or her self-worth and fulfillment are found in crowds, in mass emotions, rather than individual transcendence. Those who do not pay deference to the celebration of force, wealth and power become freaks. It is a war on knowledge in the name of knowledge.
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Eye 1

Surprise! Google didn't delete personal Street View data after all

Cassandra Vinograd
Associated Press
Fri, 27 Jul 2012 19:20 UTC
Image
© CNET AustraliaThe all-seeing eye of Google Australia's Street View trike
After being caught spying on people across Europe and Australia with its Wi-Fi-slurping Street View cars, Google had told angry regulators that it would delete the ill-gotten data.

Google broke its promise.

Britain's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) received a letter from Google in which the company admits it kept a "small portion" of the electronic information it had been meant to get rid of.

"Google apologizes for this error," Peter Fleischer, Google's global privacy counsel, said in the letter, which the ICO published on its website.

The ICO said in a statement that Google Inc. had agreed to delete all that data nearly two years ago, adding that its failure to do so "is cause for concern."
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