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Camera

UK: Hurry up with webcams in courts, says Sky News boss

Anna Leach
The Register
Mon, 05 Sep 2011 01:45 UTC
Media chief feels justice system needs more credibility

Streaming trials on the internet will help people have confidence in the British justice system, Sky News boss John Ryley claimed in an open letter to the Justice Secretary today.

Justice Secretary Ken Clarke promised to open up British courts to cameras eight months ago in a meeting with Sky, the BBC and ITN - but as yet only dealings in the Supreme Court are filmed and published online.

John Ryley, Head of Sky News, has decided to hustle Clarke along with an open letter where he states that:

"I believe that if television cameras were allowed to broadcast the remarks made by judges when they pass sentence, it would go a long way to making the process more transparent and would dramatically improve public confidence in the system."

Ryley adds a claim that Sky News's Supreme Court Live feed, which started in May 2011, gets 90,000 visitors a day. (Though obviously only when the court is in session - it's currently off till October when the legal term starts again.)
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Laptop

Diginotar hackers targeted CIA, Mossad and MI6

Lucian Constantin
The Inquirer
Mon, 05 Sep 2011 01:55 UTC
Dutch government identifies over 500 rogue certificates

The Dutch government has revoked trust in Diginotar and released a list of over 500 fraudulent certificates issued by the hackers who broke into the company's infrastructure last month. Some of them are for the domains of the CIA, Mossad and the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS).

The Diginotar breach was discovered a week ago when a rogue *.google.com certificate issued by the certificate authority (CA) was used in attacks against Gmail users in Iran. The company admitted suffering an intrusion back in July which resulted in fraudulent certificates being issued for a number of domains.

The browser vendors reacted promptly by removing the Diginotar CA root certificate from their products, but kept the one for Diginotar's PKIoverheid sub-CA, which was used to sign Dutch government certificates.

The investigation into the incident is ongoing, but the security lapses identified are so serious that the Dutch minister of internal affairs announced in an urgent press conference at 1:15am on Saturday that the PKIoverheid sub-CA should no longer be trusted either.

Ever since the company's first public statement about the incident, the security community has wondered how many rogue certificates were issued and what domains were targeted. The Dutch government has now shed some light on this by releasing a list of 531 fraudulent certificates associated with Diginotar.
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Bad Guys

Foreign Ministry officials admit: Turkey citizens routinely humiliated at Israel's airport

Barak Ravid
Haaretz
Mon, 05 Sep 2011 01:47 UTC
Image
© David BacharSecurity staff questioning Israeli Arab passengers at Ben-Gurion Airport
Dozens of Israelis say they were humiliated at Istanbul airport, forced to strip to their underwear on Monday; Foreign Ministry officials say humiliation of Turkish citizens happens on regular basis in Israel.

Foreign Ministry officials told Haaretz on Monday that over the past year, there were dozens of complaints on the part of Turkish citizens who claimed they were humiliated by Israeli security personnel at Ben-Gurion airport.

The officials also said that almost every Turkish citizen who arrives at Ben-Gurion airport undergoes a routine procedure of extensive, humiliating examinations that also include undressing to one's underwear.

"Turkish citizens are always separated from the rest of the passengers at the airport," said a Foreign Ministry official.

"When their luggage is thoroughly examined and they undergo extensive questioning they understand it comes from security needs, but when they get to the strip search part it breaks them and they are humiliated. Many Turkish businesspeople and tourists have complained about this in the past. This humiliation ceremony of Turkish citizens is a routine matter."
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Bad Guys

Psychopathic state is eager to unleash hell: Israel Defense Forces general says that likelihood of regional war is growing

Yoav Zitun
Ynet
Mon, 05 Sep 2011 01:05 UTC
Image
© Agence France-PresseIs Israel moving closer to regional war?
Senior IDF officer warns of 'radical Islamic winter' that may lead to regional war, could prompt use of WMDs; new, more lethal weapons discovered in hands of terrorists during latest round of fighting in Gaza, Major General Eisenberg says.

Recent revolutions in the Arab world and the deteriorating ties with Turkey are raising the likelihood of a regional war in the Middle East, IDF Home Front Command Chief, Major General Eyal Eisenberg warned Monday.

"It looks like the Arab Spring, but it can also be a radical Islamic winter," he said in a speech at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.

"This leads us to the conclusion that through a long-term process, the likelihood of an all-out war is increasingly growing," the IDF general said.
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Bad Guys

Hellenic Republic on a downward spiral: Greece, Israel agree on military cooperation


RIA Novosti
Mon, 05 Sep 2011 01:00 UTC
Image
© RIA Novosti. Edward PesovIsraeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak
The Defense Minister of Greece Panos Beglitis and his Israeli counterpart Ehud Barak signed a memorandum on military cooperation in Jerusalem on Sunday, the Greek Ministry of Defense reported.

The contents of the memorandum is undisclosed. Panos Beglitis said that the two governments are intend to cooperate closely.
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Bad Guys

How private firms have cashed in on the climate of fear since 9/11

Paul Harris
Guardian
Mon, 05 Sep 2011 20:05 UTC
A US homeland security helicopter
© US Coast Guard/AFP/Getty ImagesA US homeland security helicopter patrol over New York in 2003.

The past ten years have seen the growth of a national security industrial complex that melds government and business

Charles Smith always enjoyed visiting US troops aboard. Though a civilian, he had worked for the army for decades, helping to run logistical operations from the Rock Island arsenal near Davenport, Iowa.

He helped keep troops supplied, and on trips to Iraq made a point of sitting down with soldiers in mess halls. "I would always ask them: what are we doing for you?" Smith told the Guardian.

Smith eventually got oversight of a multibillion-dollar contract the military had struck with private firm KBR, then part of the Halliburton empire, to supply US soldiers in Iraq. But, by 2004, he noticed problems: KBR could not account for a staggering $1bn (£620m) of spending.
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Gear

Sarah Palin 'Big Announcement' Flakes Out

William Browning
Yahoo News! Contributor Network
Sun, 04 Sep 2011 00:00 UTC
Image
© Associated Press/Charlie NeibergallTimothy Jacques of Bellvue, Nebraska, stands in the rain while waiting for former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to speak to Tea Party members during the Restoring America event, Saturday, Sept. 3, 2011, in Indianola, Iowa.
For all the tea party supporters who showed up in Iowa to hear what Fox News called a "major announcement" from Sarah Palin, perhaps her message should have been "psych." Palin spent a majority of her 40-minute speech thrashing the current administration for its policies and little else.

Only about 2,000 people showed up to hear a Tea Party of America public figure speak about how bad things are in America. At the Restoring America event, Palin said many things she would do. Bloomberg reports Palin wouldn't approve any bailouts yet get rid of corporate income taxes. The former governor of Alaska also said the tea party has been "mocked."

One thing Palin didn't say was whether or not she was running for president. Despite many signs in the crowd saying "Run Sarah, Run" she was coy about her political ambitions. The night before her speech, Palin said she could see more room for candidates yet she liked the current field running in the GOP primaries for 2012.
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Light Saber

Stuxnet, EPIC FAIL: Iranian nuclear power station begins generating electricity


The Guardian
Sun, 04 Sep 2011 17:02 UTC
Image
© Bagher Nasir/APThe reactor building of Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant, 750 miles south of Tehran.
Long-delayed Bushehr plant joins national grid, according to state TV

Iran's first nuclear power plant has started adding electricity to the national grid after years of delays, according to the state news agency.

"The Bushehr nuclear power plant joined the national grid on Saturday at 11.29pm (6.59pm GMT) with the power of around 60 megawatts (MW)," the Isna news agency said.

Hamid-Khadem Qaemi, a spokesman for the country's Atomic Energy Organisation, told Iran's Arabic TV station al-Alam that the plant would be officially inaugurated by 12 September, by which time it would be operating at 40% capacity. The agency was not immediately available to comment.

The $1bn (£616m), 1,000MW plant on the Gulf coast is the first of what Iran hopes will become a network of nuclear facilities that will reduce its reliance on its abundant fossil fuels.
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Coffee

He Who Gets Slapped: The Progressive Perpetuation of Past and Present Evil

Chris Floyd
Empire Burlesque
Sun, 04 Sep 2011 15:56 UTC
iraq isahaqi massacre,
© 9q9q.com
Five years ago, I wrote several articles about a horrific massacre of Iraqi civilians in Ishaqi. Credible evidence and eyewitness testimony indicated that American soldiers, in the course of a raid, had executed unarmed civilians -- including several small children -- then called in an airstrike to destroy the house, and the evidence of these murders.

At the time, these articles were criticized by some for putting the "worst case" construction on the evidence. After all, in the "fog of war" -- that clapped-out rhetorical trope which has hidden a multitude of sins down through the years -- who could know what really happened? Yeah, some mistakes might or might not have been made -- crossfire, collateral damage, etc. -- but surely no one could believe that American soldiers would deliberately do such a thing. My take -- and that of this blog's co-founder, Rich Kastelein, who put together a devastating flash film on the incident -- was just the usual overblown, knee-jerk, anti-war hissy fit, etc.

But thanks to a recent WikiLeaks revelation, we now know that at least two other groups of knee-jerk, anti-war freaks were also pursuing the "worst-case" interpretation of the massacre: UN investigators, who delivered a detailed report on the evidence to the American occupation forces -- and the invaders themselves. It turns out that American authorities regarded the UN evidence very seriously; so seriously that they took immediate, decisive action .... to cover it all up.
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Cowboy Hat

UK: Bosses' Bonuses Up by 187% Since 2002


BBC News
Mon, 05 Sep 2011 15:23 UTC
Bank notes
The Commission says complicated bonus structures can mask real rises in pay
Average bonuses for directors of FTSE 350 companies have risen by 187% since 2002, without a corresponding rise in share prices, new research suggests.

The High Pay Commission said on Monday that average annual bonuses were worth 48% of salary in 2002, but are now 90%.

Commission chairman Deborah Hargreaves said it was a "myth" that big bonuses meant companies performed better.
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