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Syrian security forces adopt shoot-on-sight policy

Rob Crilly
The Telegraph
Wed, 17 Aug 2011 20:00 UTC
syrian tank
© EPA
A Syrian tank stationed in the city of Homs

Syrian security forces have adopted a shoot-on-sight policy to prevent refugees fleeing across the border into Turkey, according to families who have braved the journey in the past week.

Yayladagi, near the Turkish border of Syria

They describe a heavy build-up of troops and tanks slowing the flood of refugees to a trickle.

Human rights campaigners say they are investigating dozens of reports that civilians have been shot dead as they try to cross.

Their stories illustrate how President Bashar al-Assad shows no sign of easing his grip on power or heeding international calls for calm.

Wednesday brought a fresh wave of arrests as Syrian troops raided houses in a Sunni district of the besieged port of Latakia, detaining hundreds of people and taking them to a stadium at the end of a four-day tank assault to crush protests.

Activists say more than 1,800 people have died and more than 30,000 arrested since democracy demonstrations erupted across the country five months ago.
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Bad Guys

Naomi Klein: Daylight Robbery, Meet Nighttime Robbery

Naomi Klein
The Nation
Wed, 17 Aug 2011 16:05 UTC
london riots
© Andy Rain/EPA
A man is framed by smashed glass inside a West London salon that was looted by rioters.

I keep hearing comparisons between the London riots and riots in other European cities - window smashing in Athens or car bonfires in Paris. And there are parallels, to be sure: a spark set by police violence, a generation that feels forgotten.

But those events were marked by mass destruction; the looting was minor. There have, however, been other mass lootings in recent years, and perhaps we should talk about them too. There was Baghdad in the aftermath of the US invasion - a frenzy of arson and looting that emptied libraries and museums. The factories got hit too. In 2004 I visited one that used to make refrigerators. Its workers had stripped it of everything valuable, then torched it so thoroughly that the warehouse was a sculpture of buckled sheet metal.

Back then the people on cable news thought looting was highly political. They said this is what happens when a regime has no legitimacy in the eyes of the people. After watching for so long as Saddam and his sons helped themselves to whatever and whomever they wanted, many regular Iraqis felt they had earned the right to take a few things for themselves. But London isn't Baghdad, and British Prime Minister David Cameron is hardly Saddam, so surely there is nothing to learn there.
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Bad Guys

Dag Hammarskjöld: Evidence Suggests UN Chief's Plane Was Shot Down

Julian Borger & Georgina Smith
The Guardian, UK
Wed, 17 Aug 2011 14:57 UTC
Plane Shot Down
© TopFoto
The wreckage of Dag Hammarskjöld's plane near Ndola, now Zambia. Eyewitnesses claim they saw a second plane fire at the UN chief's plane.
New evidence has emerged in one of the most enduring mysteries of United Nations and African history, suggesting that the plane carrying the UN secretary general, Dag Hammarskjöld, was shot down over Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) 50 years ago, and the murder covered up by British colonial authorities.

A British-run commission of inquiry blamed the 1961 crash on pilot error and a later UN investigation largely rubber-stamped its findings. They ignored or downplayed witness testimony of villagers near the crash site which suggested foul play. The Guardian has talked to surviving witnesses who were never questioned by the official investigations and were too scared to come forward.

The residents on the western outskirts of the town of Ndola described Hammarskjöld's DC6 being shot down by a second, smaller aircraft. They say the crash site was sealed off by Northern Rhodesian security forces the next morning, hours before the wreckage was officially declared found, and they were ordered to leave the area.

The key witnesses were located and interviewed over the past three years by Göran Björkdahl, a Swedish aid worker based in Africa who made the investigation of the Hammarskjöld mystery a personal quest since discovering his father had a fragment of the crashed DC6.
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Display

News International mail server password fail exposed

Kelly Fiveash
The Register
Tue, 16 Aug 2011 04:01 UTC
Full login details published along with damning letters

A letter from News International chairman James Murdoch to the Commons Culture Select Committee has let slip details of how to gain full access to the company's MS Exchange email system - albeit the information is from four years ago.

MPs published a raft of letters this lunchtime including one from jailed News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman, who claimed senior figures at the now-defunct Sunday tabloid knew that phone hacking was going on at the publication.

James Murdoch has consistently denied any knowledge of widespread phone-tapping beyond the illegal methods employed by "one rogue reporter" at the newspaper.

Among the evidence submitted to the committee was an email between an individual named Simon Avery and the company's London law firm Harbottle & Lewis co-founder Lawrence Abramson.
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Radar

Street View Wi-Fi collection incident could happen again, ICO warns

Dan Worth
V3
Tue, 16 Aug 2011 04:06 UTC
The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has said that changes to Google's privacy and data protection policies "do not eliminate" the risk of another Street View Wi-Fi data collection fiasco.

The ICO carried out an audit of Google in July after an undertaking signed by the search company in November, and said that, while the watchdog is broadly satisfied with the changes, it is still concerned that a similar event could occur.

"The audit has provided reasonable assurance over the accuracy and findings of the Privacy Report as provided by Google to the ICO. It has also provided reasonable assurance that Google has implemented the privacy process changes outlined in the Undertaking," the ICO said.

"The audit provided reasonable assurance that these changes reduce, but do not eliminate, the risk of an incident similar to the mistaken collection of payload data by Google Street View vehicles occurring again."
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Cookie

Man reveals secret recipe behind undeletable cookies

Dan Goodin
The Register
Tue, 16 Aug 2011 04:12 UTC
New and improved cookie 'respawning' revealed

A privacy researcher has revealed the evil genius behind a for-profit web analytics service capable of following users across more than 500 sites, even when all cookie storage was disabled and sites were viewed using a browser's privacy mode.

The technique, which worked with sites including Hulu, Spotify and GigaOm, is controversial because it allowed analytics startup KISSmetrics to construct detailed browsing histories even when users went through considerable trouble to prevent tracking of the websites they viewed. It had the ability to resurrect cookies that were deleted, and could also compile a user's browsing history across two or more different browsers. It came to light only after academic researchers published a paper late last month.

KISSmetrics CEO responded with a post on its website claiming the research "significantly distorts our technology and business practices." The company also responded by adding a "consumer-level opt-out for those who wish to be entirely removed from all KISSmetrics tracking, going well beyond the options that other analytics companies provide."
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Eye 1

Germany, France propose collective 'government' for the eurozone led by EU president

Sarah DiLorenzo, David McHugh and Tali Arbel
Associated Press
Tue, 16 Aug 2011 03:11 UTC
Image
The leaders of France and Germany called Tuesday for greater economic discipline and unity among European nations but declined to take immediate financial measures seen by many investors as the only way to halt the continent's spiraling debt crisis.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell, the euro slid against the dollar and key European markets edged down in off-hour trading after Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced the results of their emergency talks in Paris.

Sarkozy called for a "new economic government" for Europe that would meet at least twice a year with European Union President Herman Van Rompuy as its head, but he offered few other details or indications that the body would have real power.

Merkel and Sarkozy also called for all euro zone nations to enact constitutional amendments requiring balanced budgets. They said they want the process completed by the summer of 2012, but it would almost certainly run into protracted political difficulties in many countries.
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Bad Guys

US: Meet the Christian Dominionist 'Prayer Warriors' Who Have Chosen Rick Perry as Their Vehicle to Power

Rachel Tabachnick
AlterNet
Mon, 15 Aug 2011 22:53 UTC
Rick Perry
© Veronica Zaragovia/AFP/Getty
The New Apostolic Reformation seeks dominion over society and government -- and it looks like Perry is their chosen candidate.

Since he announced his candidacy on Saturday, Texas Governor Rick Perry has been hailed as the great GOP hope of 2012. Perry's entry into the chaotic Republican primary race has excited the establishment in part because he does not have Michele Bachmann's reputation for religious zealotry, yet can likely count on the support of the Religious Right.

Another advantage for Perry is support from an extensive 50-state "prayer warrior" network, organized by the New Apostolic Reformation. A religious-political movement whose leaders call themselves apostles and prophets, NAR shares its agenda for control of society and government with other "dominionists," but has a distinctly different theology than other groups in the Religious Right. They have their roots in Pentecostalism (though their theology has been denounced as a heresy by Pentecostal denominations in the past). The movement is controversial, even inside conservative evangelical circles.

Nevertheless, Perry took the gamble that NAR could help him win the primaries, a testament to the power of the apostles' 50-state prayer warrior network.

Comment: For more information on the Seven Mountains and Dominionism see:

America's own Taliban

The Terrifying Christian Right

Hijacking The Holy - C Street, Dominionism and Sarah Palin

America's Dirty Secret: How a Psycho-Sexual Cult Holds America Prisoner

      Read More...
Bad Guys

Could an Alien Invasion Really Save The U.S. Economy?


The Week
Tue, 16 Aug 2011 13:37 UTC
Alien Invasion
© Mike Agliolo / Corbis
Economist Paul Krugman posits a faked alien invasion as a way to create fiscal stimulus.

Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman says the spending required to repel a threat from space would stimulate the economy in ways Congress won't.

There's no shortage of ideas on how to help the faltering economy, but Nobel Prize winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has come up with what has to be the oddest suggestion yet: Fake a looming invasion from outer space. In an interview with CNN, Krugman cited "a Twilight Zone episode in which scientists fake an alien threat in order to achieve world peace.

Well, this time... we'd need it in order to get some fiscal stimulus." According to Krugman's tossed-off theory, we'd need a massive buildup to counter the apparently looming invasion. "[If] inflation and budget deficits took secondary place to that, this slump would be over in 18 months." (Watch the video below). Valid hypothesis... or just plain silly?

Sounds daffy, but Krugman is right: "If this fear of an alien invasion prompted the government to spend, say, $1 trillion on telescopes and lasers," says Joe Weisenthal at Business Insider, that would improve the bottom lines of American businesses by $1 trillion, if nothing else. It would obviously be wiser to spend the money more usefully, by fixing clogged airports and crumbling bridges. "But that would take political will that we don't have."
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Blackbox

US: Tax the super-rich or riots will rage in 2012

Paul B. Farrell
Market Watch
Tue, 16 Aug 2011 17:35 UTC
Image
© Reuters
Police officers in riot gear drag a man along a street in London Aug. 8, 2011.
Commentary: 6 reasons we can't stop coming economic meltdown

What a year. Rage in London, Egypt, Athens, Damascus. All real. Just a metaphor in the new "Planet of the Apes" film? No, much more. Warning: More rage is dead ahead. Across our planet a new generation is filled with rage. High unemployment. Raging inflation. Dreams lost. Hope gone. While the super -rich get richer and richer.

Listen to that hissing: The fuse is rapidly burning, warning us. Wake up before the rage explodes in your face. This firestorm is endangering America's future. From forces outside, yes. But far more deadly, from deep within our collective psyche. We have lost our moral compass. We are self-destructing.

Crackpot warning? No. This warning comes from the elite International Monetary Fund. A recent IMF report looked at "the causes of the two major U.S. economic crises over the past 100 years, the Great Depression of 1929 and the Great Recession of 2007," writes Rana Foroohar, an economics editor at Time magazine.

"There are two remarkable similarities in the eras that preceded these crises. Both saw a sharp increase in income inequality and household-debt-to-income ratios." And in each case, "as the poor and middle-class were squeezed, they tried to cope by borrowing to maintain their standard of living."
      Read More...
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