Korea: Wired

It is a spectacular collision of real and virtual worlds and the consequences are potentially earth shattering.

On the one side, there is South Korea - the most wired place on earth, with an internet that sizzles into 90 per cent of all homes and a national obsession with internet games. 

On the other, there is North Korea - one of the most paranoid and dangerously unpredictable places on earth, with a million-strong army and, as this film reveals, a super-secret team of state-authorised hackers looking to bring chaos to its neighbour and beyond.

In South Korea, millions are addicted to the action unfolding on their screens - games bristling with powerful weaponry, requiring lightning-fast trigger skills to survive and played out on virtual battle grounds.

Internet gaming is a massive phenomenon in a country with super-fast internet, with its own superstars, big bucks and even its own top-rating television shows

Number of Palestinian homes demolished since 1967

Since 1967, Israel has practised a range of policies leading to the internal displacement of about 160,000 Palestinians within the occupied West Bank and Gaza. Of these actions, house demolitions are the most visible.

These are carried out by the Israeli army for a number of reasons, including "administrative" demolitions, where Palestinian homes have been built without Israeli-issued permits, as well as punitive demolitions –  where a family member is accused of being involved in militant activity.

The most devastating demolitions, however, are caused by large-scale military operations, such as those during the war on Gaza in 2008-09.

Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) argues that, seen in their totality since 1967, these home demolitions amount to an intentional "policy of displacement".

Last year, ICAHD presented the United Nations with a report, charging that Israel had a deliberate policy of forcing Palestinians out of East Jerusalem, and that this might constitute a war crime.

The mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, dismissed the report.

Six In The Morning

CIA interrogation probe ends without any charges

　The US justice department has ended its investigation into the CIA's interrogation programme for terror detainees, without bringing charges.

The BBC 31 August 2012 Last updated at 02:24 GMT
The probe, which studied two deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq, ends a series of reviews into the treatment of 101 detainees in US custody since 9/11. Attorney General Eric Holder said there was not enough evidence to "sustain a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt". A prominent civil rights group said the result was a "scandal". But CIA officials welcomed the decision. In June 2011 the justice department began a full criminal investigation into the deaths of two men while in custody. The department has never named the men, but they are widely reported to have been Gul Rahman and Manadel al-Jamadi.

Neighbors of Pakistani Christian girl in blasphemy case living in fear


By Saheed Shah | McClatchy Newspapers
The Christians are trickling back to the poor neighborhood in Islamabad that they fled after a blasphemy allegation ignited terror earlier this month. But fear still haunts them. By Thursday, perhaps half of the 300 to 500 hundred families that had run in horror from their homes the night of Aug. 16 – after a Christian girl was charged with burning pages of the Quran – had returned. “We are also Pakistanis. We have the right to live here in peace,” said Khursheed Ahmed, 65, who returned after a week to her family’s home in the Mehrabadi district on the outskirts of the capital. “Where else would we go?”

Call for nationalisation of South African resources


ALEX DUVAL SMITH CAPE TOWN FRIDAY 31 AUGUST 2012
The controversial politician Julius Malema yesterday said black South Africans are worse off than during apartheid and launched a hit list for nationalisation as he capitalised on discontent over the Marikana mine massacre. The hit list included the South African arm of world's biggest steel company and the country's iron and platinum resources.

German journalists in China ask for Merkel's help
Foreign journalists are under strict surveillance in China, Johnny Erling, correspondent for the daily 'Die Welt,' has told DW. He and other journalists sent a letter to the German chancellor asking for help.


Twenty-six German correspondents working in China sent a letter to Chancellor Angela Merkel. In it they describe how Chinese authorities are increasingly making it difficult for them to do their work, how their informants are threatened and their colleagues intimidated. The journalists asked the chancellor to consider this during inter-governmental consultations in Beijing and demand better working conditions.

Morsi delivers his calling card
ROVING EYE

By Pepe Escobar
You'd better not mess with Muslim Brother Morsi. Straight out of "communist" China - where he secured a red carpet welcome from President Hu Jintao and vice-president Xi Jinping - the Egyptian president lands in "evil" Iran as a true Arab world leader. [1] Imagine conducting a poll in Tampa, Florida, among delegates at the Republican convention anointing the dodgy Mitt Romney-Paul Ryan duo as their presidential ticket. Chances are Morsi would be ranked worse than Hitler (oh no; that was Saddam. Or maybe Osama. Or maybe Ahmadinejad ... )

Lessons learned from El Salvador's constitutional crisis
El Salvador's National Assembly reelected previously barred magistrates, moving a step toward national consensus that the Supreme Court has the last word on the country's Constitution.

By Tim Muth, Guest blogger
El Salvador's constitutional crisis is officially over. The National Assembly has re-elected the magistrates to the classes of 2006 and 2012. The four judges of the constitutional chamber including Belarmino Jaime continue with their roles set out in El Salvador's constitution. The Supreme Court has a new President, Salomón Padilla. What are the lessons of this protracted crisis? A victory for constitutional order. The resolution of the crisis represented a vindication for the Constitutional Chamber.

The Romney Presidential Campaign: The Truth Hides

Truth hides whenever we lose our focus
Slips out the back quickly replaced by the bogus
Fleeing soundbites disguised as facts
That reappear in the small print on every contract
Truth hides on the other side of a two-way mirror
In countless documents sent straight to the shredder
That might finally give us the whole of the picture
But until the day we decide to dig a little deeper
We know the truth will hide

Republican 

Six In The Morning

Non-Aligned Summit: Iran denies seeking nuclear weapons

　Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has opened a summit of the Non-Aligned Movement by saying his country is not seeking nuclear weapons.

The BBC 30 August 2012
Speaking as leaders and delegates of 50 countries gathered in Tehran, he also accused the US of "bullying" the world. The crisis in Syria is on the agenda for the two-day summit, as are human rights and nuclear disarmament. Egypt's President Mohammed Mursi is attending - the first visit to Iran by an Egyptian leader since 1979. The Non-Aligned Movement (Nam) was established in 1961 by countries that wanted to counterbalance the dominance of the US and Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Water crisis will make Gaza strip 'unliveable'
Banks must approve plans for a $500m desalination plant that would provide a new water supply, conference hears

John Vidal in Stockholm guardian.co.uk, Thursday 30 August 2012 07.00 BST
The Gaza strip faces a water crisis that will soon make it "unliveable" unless plans for a $500m desalination plant are approved by banks, delegates at a water conference in Stockholm were told this week. Water for the 1.6 million people – half of them children and two-thirds refugees – who live in just 365 sq km of land bordering the Mediterranean comes entirely from the shallow coastal aquifer shared between Gaza, Israel and Egypt, which is only partly replenished each year by rainfall. Decades of overpumping and heavy pollution from salts and waste water has left the aquifer highly degraded and in danger of irreparable damage.

Miners charged with murder – of colleagues shot dead by police
Lawyers say 270 workers will not get fair trial over strike massacre and demand their release

ALEX DUVAL SMITH THURSDAY 30 AUGUST 2012
State prosecutors have charged 270 strikers arrested at Marikana platinum mine with the murder of 34 colleagues. The arrests went ahead despite confirmation that the victims were shot dead by police, in the latest setback to prospects of peace in the South African mining industry. The strike at Marikana that called for 3,000 rock drillers to have their monthly pay increased to 12,500 rand (£940) has led to a total of 44 deaths, including those of two policemen and two security guards. In shocking scenes on 16 August, police opened fire on a group of miners, killing 34 and injuring 78.

Greeks turn immigrants to scapegoats
A confrontational tone is emerging in Greek society as racist attacks increase and political conflict escalates. Observers believe the economic crisis is just one of the reasons for the unrest.

dw.de
It happened in broad daylight on Saturday (25.08.2012) in the town of Manolada in western Greece, as migrant workers helped with the annual strawberry harvest. Two men jammed a 22-year-old Egyptian man in one of their car's windows after a heated argument then dragged him nearly a kilometer through town. According to police, the man had previously attacked the pair. According to leftist opposition newspapers, the Egyptian man had merely demanded outstanding wages. It was one of a handful of recent attacks on foreigners in Greece. Earlier this month, an Iraqi man was stabbed in downtown Athens, and human rights organizations report that at least 200 attacks with racist overtones happened in Greece in the past two months. For the most part, they blame the ultra-nationalist Golden Dawn party for stoking xenophobia. The party has 18 seats in the national parliament.

Live TV coverage put national security in jeopardy, says Bench
Security forces’ positions were being watched by collaborators across border’

NEW DELHI, August 29, 2012
Slamming the electronic media for its live coverage of the 26/11 terrorist attacks, the Supreme Court on Wednesday said that by doing so the Indian TV channels did not serve the national interest or any social cause. A Bench of Justices Aftab Alam and C.K. Prasad, while confirming the death sentence on the prime accused, Ajmal Kasab, said the “reckless coverage… gave rise to a situation where, on the one hand, the terrorists were completely hidden from the security forces and they had no means to know their exact positions or even the kind of firearms and explosives they possessed and, on the other, the positions of the security forces, their weapons and all their operational movements were being watched by the collaborators across the border on TV screens and being communicated to the terrorists.”

US agents attacked in Mexico believed to be CIA
The CIA presence in Mexico reportedly increased last year after the US deployed more agents to work alongside Mexican military officials in the fight against drug trafficking organizations.

By Edward Fox, InSight Crime
A leaked report in Mexico affirms that the US officials attacked by Mexican Federal Police last week were CIA agents, something that has since been confirmed to InSight Crime. Writing for El Universal, Mexican journalist Carlos Loret de Mola claimed on August 28 that he had been privy to a confidential report confirming that the two US officials injured after Mexican Federal Police opened fire on their armored Toyota SUV in Morelos state on August 24 were in fact Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officials. A high level intelligence source has since confirmed to InSight Crime that the men were CIA personnel.

Japan's political leadership: Nothing but a bunch of clowns

Yes, Japan's political elite are nothing but a bunch of clowns stuffed inside their little clown car looking for that next gig which will lead to political super stardom.  But, success ever eludes them as they grasp defeat like they've just won the lottery.


Sadakazu Tanigaki the current President of Japan's Liberal Democratic party (LDP) who following then Prime Minister's Yukio Hatayama's first speech before the Diet laying the Democratic  party of Japan's vision for the country Tanigaki equated that speech with those given by Adolf Hitler to Nazi youth rallies in Nurenburg.   One might believe that following these asinine comments Sadakazu Tanigaki would be forced to resign. You would be wrong as failing up is all part of the political process. His further achievements include calling for new elections  every other day so that he can complete his master failure training and become Prime Minister. At which point I'm sure he'll enact some policies which will lead to the establishment of a political clown college.



Ichiro Ozawa is former member of both the Liberal Democratic party and the Democratic party of Japan.

Ichiro Ozawa is the Richard Nixon of Japan in the `I'm not a crook' category of political  leaders as evidenced by his involvement in a political funds scandal which led to several of his former aides be charged and tried on the misuse of political funds for purpose of buying land in Tokyo for the purpose of constructing of a dormitory for members of the Diet.  The fund is controlled by Ozawa and Ozawa alone yet he kept insisting that members of his staff made all the decisions concerning how those funds should be allocated.  Yet, his signature is all over the loan documents
which he claims are controlled by evil little elves who are out to destroy his successfully corrupt political career.  

Following the unsuccessful attempts to place him in the Grey Bar Hotel Ichiro Ozawa thinking solely of himself and his mad desire to become Prime Minister has formed a new political party Kokumin no seikatsu ga daiichi (People's Life Comes First) party with 49 other former members of the DPJ who are wholly owned by him. I'm sure the people will come "first" just as soon as Ichiro Ozawa's Galaxy sized ego is assuaged.      

On Wednesday evening the upper house of the Japanese Diet voted to censure Prime Minister Yoshihika Noda while the resolution is not binding the LDP, New Kometo and seven other smaller opposition parties will boycott the remaining sessions  of the Diet to force an early election which they hope return the LDP to power once again.

Remember these are the same clowns who following the bursting of the Bubble Economy decided that Japan hand't been driven far enough into the ditch so they wanted to give it further push by doing nothing to help the country recover  for more than a decade.

Return them to power so that their failure can be complete.

Six In The Morning

Robert Fisk: Inside Daraya - how a failed prisoner swap turned into a massacre

Exclusive: The first Western journalist to enter the town that felt Assad's fury hears witness accounts of Syria's bloodiest episode

ROBERT FISK 

 

 

WEDNESDAY 29 AUGUST 2012

The massacre town of Daraya is a place of ghosts and questions. It echoed with the roar of mortar explosions and the crackle of gunfire yesterday, its few returning citizens talking of death, assault, foreign "terrorists", and its cemetery of slaughter haunted by snipers.

The men and women to whom we could talk, two of whom had lost loved ones on Daraya's day of infamy four days ago, told a story different from the version that has been repeated around the world: theirs was a tale of hostage-taking by the Free Syria Army and desperate prisoner-exchange negotiations between the armed opponents of the regime and the Syrian army, before President Bashar al-Assad's government forces stormed into the town to seize it back from rebel control.

Tymoshenko is counting on Strasbourg

Is Yulia Tymoshenko a political prisoner? She believes so, but Ukraine disagrees. Now the European Court of Human Rights is to consider the matter.

"You are the only hope." Lawyer Sergiy Vlasenko conveys his message to the eight Strasbourg judges with an earnest expression and a determined voice. His appearance is the emotional climax in a two-hour hearing of an extremely politically-charged case: Yulia Tymoshenko, Ukrainian opposition leader and former prime minister, is turning to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) from her jail cell in Kharkiv.

"We cannot hope for justice in Ukrainian courts," Tymoshenko's daughter Yevgenia told Deutsche Welle.

Families storm mortuary after Gambia confirms executions

By BABOUCARR CEESAY, NATION Correspondent in BANJUL and TAMBA MATTHEW in DAKAR
Posted  Wednesday, August 29  2012 at  02:53

The Gambia Government has confirmed the execution of nine death row inmates, despite previous description of reports as “rumours and speculation and irresponsible spreading of information.’’

The ministry said it wishes to inform the general public that the convicts were “executed by firing squad on Sunday August, 26, 2012 following the convictions and pronouncements of death sentences by the Gambian Courts of competent jurisdiction and further to the exhaustion of their appeals.’’

It added: “The general public is hereby warned that the rule of law as regards the peace and stability and the protection of lives, property and liberty will not be compromised for whatever reason. That all acts of violence, criminal activities and indiscipline resulting to murder, treason, arson, trafficking in drugs and humans and the likes of such offences attracting death sentences shall not be tolerated. Therefore, all sentences as prescribed by law will be carried out to the letter including the death penalty,” the release said.

Southeast Asia

Aug 29, 2012 Nationalism runs high in Asian disputes By Elliot Brennan  Tensions in Asia's territorial disputes continue to escalate. A dangerous mix of nationalist sentiments and domestic politics in China, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and the Philippines, have exacerbated long simmering disputes over several island clusters throughout the region.  One such dispute between Japan and China over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands had the US Secretary of Defense discussing unmanned aerial vehicle patrols with his Japanese counterpart. A flotilla of 20 Japanese activist boats dispatched there caused further headaches for politicians in Beijing and Tokyo.  Protests against "Japanese aggression" were held in Beijing, Shanghai, Changsha and Hong Kong following postings on the social network site Weibo, which were quickly censored and removed.  Australia and EU announce world's biggest carbon trading system Australia and the European Union plan to link their "cap-and-trade" systems to create the biggest emissions trading market on the globe, energy and climate change officials announced Tuesday. Under a cap-and-trade system, countries cap the amount of pollution they are willing to allow, then issue permits for how much each business or entity can pollute. Businesses or entities that pollute more than their share can buy credits from others that pollute less than allowed. Although the idea has struggled to gain traction nationally in the United States, it has taken off elsewhere in the world, most recently in South Korea, and was adopted last year in California. Hurricane Isaac wobbles back out to Gulf, sends storm surge ashore By Miguel Llanos, NBC News Hurricane Isaac produced a dangerous storm surge along the northern Gulf coast Tuesday night after wobbling back out to sea two hours after its initial landfall on southeastern Louisiana, according to aircraft and radar data from the National Hurricane Center. Flooding from rainfall was expected to follow, the center said. The storm surge combined with a high tide will cause normally dry areas near the Mississippi and southeastern Louisiana coast to be flooded by peaks of 6 to 12 feet, the center said. Alabama could see a up to 8 feet; the Florida panhandle, 6 feet. A 10-foot surge was reported at Shell Beach, La., the center said.

Six In The Morning

Mandatory evacuations outside New Orleans as Isaac nears hurricane strength

　

By Miguel Llanos, NBC News
Unprotected, low-lying areas outside New Orleans were being evacuating Monday as Tropical Storm Isaac grew closer to becoming a hurricane that could make landfall in or near Louisiana almost seven years to the day after Hurricane Katrina struck. "All preparations to protect life and property should be completed tonight," said Ed Rappaport of the National Hurricane Center in his 8 p.m. ET update. He emphasized that water from rain and storm surge would be the biggest threat -- 6 to 18 inches of rain are expected. Isaac's wind speed increased to 70 mph, just 4 mph short of a hurricane, the National Hurricane Center said in a late afternoon update. It also forecast Isaac would reach Category 2 status with 100 mph winds late Tuesday night. That's a stronger Isaac than was forecast earlier Monday.

Rachel Corrie's death was an accident, Israeli judge rules
Judge finds no fault in military investigation that cleared defence force of responsibility for protester being killed by bulldozer

Harriet Sherwood in Haifa guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 28 August 2012 08.05 BST
The death of the pro-Palestinian activist Rachel Corrie was not caused by the negligence of the Israeli state or army, a judge has ruled, dismissing a civil lawsuit brought by the family. Corrie's death was an accident for which the state of Israel was not responsible, said the judge at Haifa district court. There had been no fault in the internal Israeli military investigation clearing the driver of the bulldozer which crushed Corrie to death in March 2003 of any blame. The judge said the driver had not seen the young American activist.

Slaughter in Helmand as Taliban fighters deliver show of power
US Marines unable to prevent 17 victims having throats slit by insurgents

JULIUS CAVENDISH TUESDAY 28 AUGUST 2012
Taliban fighters cut the throats of 17 civilians in a remote corner of Helmand province this weekend in a grim reminder of how much power the insurgents still wield in large swaths of Afghanistan, despite Nato claims that they are on the run. The massacre took place on Sunday afternoon in Kajaki, a district almost entirely in the insurgents' hands despite the efforts of thousands of hard-charging US Marines to claw the province back under government control.

Coalition smolders over euro crisis remarks
Alexander Dobrindt, general secretary of the Bavarian sister party to Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats, has reaped criticism for giving voice to his view that Greece should abandon the euro.


"Parochial whining" - that's how a leading party colleague dismissed the controversial remarks by Christian Social Union General Secretary Alexander Dobrindt about Greece and the euro crisis. Dobrindt had told the Sunday edition of Germany's Bild newspaper that there was no way around Greece's exit from the eurozone. Dobrindt's remarks contradicted Chancellor Angela Merkel's statements on Friday at a meeting with Prime Minister Antonis Samaras: "I want Greece to remain part of the eurozone." She also added she knows "no one in the government factions who does not want that." Unfortunately, Dobrindt does happen to be a member of the joint parliamentary faction that includes Merkel's Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian sister the CSU.

Angola votes in second peacetime polls


By AFP Posted Tuesday, August 28 2012 at 08:58
Angola votes Friday for only the second time since its civil war ended a decade ago, with the incumbent ruling party expected to sweep the polls. The nation has transformed from one of the world's most desolate places to a fast-growing oil economy that sees itself as a regional player. As the election nears, brightly coloured party flags drape across Luanda's streets, while on the sidewalks, volunteers like university student Jaime Cuanga stand with an iPad ready to help voters.

Will the Colombian government make peace with FARC rebels?
With the aim of ending five decades of war, Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos announced exploratory talks with leftist FARC rebels on Monday. A peace agreement would conclude a conflict that has killed tens of thousands over the years.

By Helen Murphy and Luis Jaime Acosta, Reuters
Colombia's government is seeking peace with the country's biggest rebel group, the FARC, and could consider also holding talks with a second guerrilla movement to end five decades of war, President Juan Manuel Santos said on Monday. In a televised address from the presidential palace, Santos said his government would learn from the mistakes of so many previous leaders who tried but failed to clinch a lasting ceasefire with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. "Since the first day of my government I have completed my constitutional obligation to find peace. With that aim, we have had exploratory conversations with the FARC to seek an end to the conflict," he said, confirming weeks of swirling rumors that his government had started behind-the-scenes discussions.

Random Japan

PUPPET MASTER

• The tiff between Osaka mayor Toru Hashimoto and the local bunraku community continues. After slashing the annual budget for the city’s puppet-play association by 25 percent, Hashimoto then attended a show and declared that the “staging was unsatisfactory” and “the last scene was plain, and lacked something.” To which one of the performers responded with a classic line: “Mr. Hashimoto says that if we create something interesting, people will come to watch, but I wonder if that’s the right approach to take.”
• The labor ministry is considering a proposal to raise the minimum wage from ¥737 to ¥744. Even if that happens, though, minimum-wage workers in Miyagi and Hokkaido will earn less than welfare recipients.
• The operator of Tokyo Disneyland says the park generated record sales (¥87.46 billion) and profits (¥3.04 billion) in the April-June quarter.

CRIMES & MISDEMEANORS

• A Tokyo man who disappeared for nine years after being found guilty in a 2002 hit-and-run accident resurfaced last month and offered an excuse: “I thought that even if I didn’t appear in court on the sentencing day it would be OK to go later.”
• In deciding not to bring charges against four cops over an incident at a local karaoke bar, police officials in Kanagawa have deemed, somewhat incredibly, that even though the men forced a female colleague to change her clothes in front of them and kiss them, their actions “do not constitute indecent assault or any other sex-related crime.”
• The only foreigner officially certified as a survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima was found to be living in the US. Tomiko Shoji, an 86-year-old Taiwan native who acquired Japanese citizenship in 1985, currently resides in Ohio.
• In response to “a series of life-threatening accidents involving consumer products and services,” the government has decided to… set up a commission to investigate the issue

OFFICIAL BUSINESS

• The government announced it will introduce a national ID system in which each citizen will be allotted their own individual personal identification number. The scheme’s Japlish moniker—“My Number”—is predictably lame.
• The foreign ministry says it will upgrade its African affairs office into a full-fledged bureau. The office had previously been part of the Middle Eastern and African Affairs Bureau.
• The government-run Japan Finance Corp. announced that the number of loans it’s given out to new businesses has skyrocketed 9.2 percent during the past year. Many of the loans have gone “to establish hair salons and restaurants.”
• The Council on National Strategy, meanwhile, says the keys to revitalizing the Japanese economy by 2020 will be “the fields of energy and environment, medical care and welfare, and agriculture, forestry, and fisheries.”

stats

• 83.5Percent of Japanese men aged 20-24 who drink alcohol, according to the health ministry
• 90.4Percent of Japanese women aged 20-24 who drink booze
• 2,134Number of people who played ukulele simultaneously at an event staged by Guinness World Records in Yokohama last month
• 323.7Weight, in grams, of a record-setting plum grown in Yamanashi

This video says a lot about race and racism in America

The person speaking is Chris Matthews who is sitting on the far left. The person he is talking to about racism within the Republican party is Reince Priebus who is chairman of the Republican National Committee and sitting on the far right. Everything Mr. Matthews is saying is true and as he continues talking everyone sitting on that set becomes more uncomfortable because they are being forced to face up to an ugly truth.

China: Broken dreams

Many young Chinese are losing faith in China's economic miracle.
Although the nation's economy has expanded to more than $7 trillion and is poised to overtake the US in the next decade as the world's largest, fewer Chinese feel they are sharing in the prosperity.
A sense of disillusionment is spreading, particularly among the post-1980 generation, who are well-educated and mobile but still struggle to find profitable jobs.
Signs that the economy is slowing only add to the malaise. The Chinese government predicts the economy will grow by 7.5 per cent in 2012, down from 9.2 per cent last year, which would be the slowest growth rate since 1990. Economists say this could mean the loss of two million jobs.
At the same time a record number of new graduates are looking for work. Some 25 million Chinese will be on the job hunt this year. Even those who find work are frequently disappointed.
Surveys show that young Chinese office workers in big cities are widely unhappy. Most complain of a feeling of insecurity.

Six In The Morning

Rachel Corrie death: struggle for justice culminates in Israeli court

Nine years after she was killed protesting in the Gaza Strip, the verdict in a lawsuit brought by her family is about to be heard

• Harriet Sherwood in Jerusalem
• guardian.co.uk, Monday 27 August 2012

Her blonde hair, megaphone and orange fluorescent jacket with reflective stripes made 23-year-old Rachel Corrie easily identifiable as an international activist on the overcast spring afternoon in 2003 when she tried to stop an advancing Israeli military bulldozer.

The young American's intention was to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian home in Rafah refugee camp, close to the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. Scores of homes had already been crushed; Corrie was one of eight American and British volunteers acting as human shields for local families.

"She was standing on top of a pile of earth," said fellow activist and eyewitness Richard Purssell, from Brighton, at the time. "The driver cannot have failed to see her.

Wanted: 'Innocent' brides for China's ultra-rich

They have to be serious about getting married. These guys are looking for good wives

CLIFFORD COONAN 

 

BEIJING

 

MONDAY 27 AUGUST 2012

Money can't buy you love, but it helps. Screening events are being held around China to find suitable women for a matchmaking party for 32 rich men, each worth the equivalent of £10m. So far, 2,700 hopeful young women have signed up just for the interviews.

Matchmaking is big business in China and finding partners for multimillionaires is a lucrative game.

Forced to focus on building their pile of wealth during their early careers, many tycoons don't have the time to follow the advice of their parents on who to marry.

The Irish Times - Monday, August 27, 2012

Germany presses again for treaty to drive integration

DEREK SCALLY in Berlin

GERMANY IS once more pressing EU partners to begin negotiations by the end of the year on a new treaty to drive on European integration.

Officials close to Chancellor Angela Merkel are lobbying for leaders to announce in December a date for the opening of a new European convention to debate the contents of the treaty.

The German leader said yesterday that the euro zone crisis had reached a “decisive phase” and urged European leaders to “weigh carefully” their public remarks on the currency bloc and, in particular, Greece. This latest initiative, according to Der Spiegel magazine, reflects Berlin’s wish to provide a solid legal foundation for new EU fiscal oversight rules.

Africa innovations: 15 ideas helping to transform a continent

26 AUG 2012 12:41 - GUARDIAN REPORTERS

Bright ideas: A cellphone database for dairy farmers and a strain of sweet potato that can help fight child blindness.

These are just two of the imaginative new ideas that are tackling Africa's old problems

1. Hippo water roller

Idea: The Hippo water roller is a drum that can be rolled on the ground, making it easier for those without access to taps to haul larger amounts of water faster.

Problem: Two out of every five people in Africa have no nearby water facilities and are forced to walk long distances to reach water sources. Traditional methods of balancing heavy loads of water on the head limit the amount people can carry, and cause long-term spinal injuries. Women and children usually carry out these time-consuming tasks, missing out on educational and economic opportunities. In extreme cases, they can be at increased risks of assault or rape when travelling long distances.

27 August 2012 Last updated at 03:13 GMT

Samsung shares fall after jury orders $1bn in damages

Shares of Samsung Electronics have suffered their biggest fall in a single day in almost four years, after a US jury found the technology giant copied designs from Apple.

The South Korean company's shares fell 7% in Seoul trading, the most since October 2008.

The company was ordered to pay $1.05bn (£665m) in damages to Apple, in one of the most significant rulings in a global intellectual property battle.

Samsung will appeal over the verdict.

Sales worries

Analysts said investors were worried that the ruling could affect revenues.

"An adjustment in the next few days is unavoidable as the damage amount was much bigger than market expectations, and there are further uncertainties, such as the possibility of a sales ban," said John Park, from Daishin Securities.

Egypt’s garbage crisis bedevils Morsi

By Ernesto Londoño, Monday, August 27, 3:29 AM

To understand why garbage is piling up on Cairo’s streets, it helps to pay a visit to Atel Shenouda’s clandestine pigpen.

Ensconced on the rooftop of his five-story apartment building in the predominantly Christian Zaraib district of Cairo, the 43-year-old trash collector’s hogs rummage through a smattering of discarded vegetables and other organic waste.

Pigs used to play a central role in this city’s rudimentary waste management system. But since a 2009 health code outlawed the practice of owning pigs that feed on garbage, just a few illicit pigs like Shenouda’s have been doing their work in hiding — and the trash has been stacking up, a problem that has worsened since the 2011 revolution.

Israel breaks silence over army abuses

Ex-soldiers admit to appalling violence against Palestinian children

  Hafez Rajabi was marked for life by his encounter with the men of the Israeli army's Kfir Brigade five years ago this week. Sitting beneath the photograph of his late father, the slightly built 21-year-old in jeans and trainers points to the scar above his right eye where he was hit with the magazine of a soldier's assault rifle after the patrol came for him at his grandmother's house before 6am on 28 August 2007.

He lifts his black Boss T-shirt to show another scar running some three inches down his back from the left shoulder when he says he was violently pushed – twice – against a sharp point of the cast-iron balustrade beside the steps leading up to the front door. And all that before he says he was dragged 300m to another house by a unit commander who threatened to kill him if he did not confess to throwing stones at troops, had started to beat him again, and at one point held a gun to his head. "He was so angry," says Hafez. "I was certain that he was going to kill me."

 

For the past eight years, Breaking the Silence has been taking testimonies from former soldiers who witnessed or participated in human rights abuses in the occupied territories. Most of these accounts deal with "rough justice" administered to minors by soldiers on the ground, often without specific authorisation and without recourse to the military courts. Reading them, however, it's hard not to recall the Sedley report's shocked reference to the "belief, which was advanced to us by a military prosecutor, that every Palestinian child is a 'potential terrorist'".
The soldier puts it differently: "We were sort of indifferent. It becomes a kind of habit. Patrols with beatings happened on a daily basis. We were really going at it. It was enough for you to give us a look that we didn't like, straight in the eye, and you'd be hit on the spot. We got to such a state and were so sick of being there."

Yet, there is a pro Israeli American blog  (for which I will not provide a link) whose contributors voice no objections to indefinite dentition without charge or trial of Palestinians and who believe Israel has the right to imprison children for throwing rocks at Israeli military equipment.     

Six In The Morning

On Sunday

Apple's victory over Samsung could mean more lawsuits

　Some predict the ruling will force manufacturers back to the drawing board, as they seek to design smartphones and tablets that wouldn't violate Apple's patents.

By Dawn C. Chmielewski and Jessica Guynn, Los Angeles Times August 26, 2012
Steve Jobs didn't live to see the outcome of the bruising war that pitted his iPhone and iPad against mobile devices that use Google's Android software. But he issued the call to arms. "I am going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go to thermonuclear war on this," Jobs told Walter Isaacson, author of a posthumously published biography of the Apple co-founder. "They are scared to death, because they know they are guilty."

Lebanon fears a firestorm as old rifts that led to civil war open up again
Violence spilling over from Syria revives ancient resentments

Martin Chulov Beirut The Observer, Sunday 26 August 2012
A respite from almost a fortnight of clashes in Lebanon's second city, Tripoli, raised hopes yesterday that the release of some kidnapping victims would ease a growing threat of unchecked violence spilling over from the Syrian civil war. But the lull failed to douse an enduring fear elsewhere in Lebanon that the enmity in the north will inevitably spread to other parts of the country. Another day of soaring violence in neighbouring Syria instead fuelled concerns that the raging civil war would further spill beyond the borders of its unstable neighbour.

Ghana's witch camps: last refuge of the powerless and the persecuted
Four hundred years after the notorious Pendle trials, in some countries women accused of witchcraft are still being beaten, killed or hounded from their homes. And in Britain, claims of possession have been used to justify abuse

SARAH MORRISON SUNDAY 26 AUGUST 2012
Alizon Device, an 11-year-old girl, from Pendle, Lancashire, was hanged, along with nine others, after admitting she was a witch who often met the devil in the company of her 80-year-old grandmother. Her grandmother was also hanged. Mercy Gigire was 25 years old, and nine months pregnant with her first child, when she was chased out of her village in northern Ghana for being a witch. Days earlier, she had bought four corn cakes from a woman at her door, who then became sick. It was assumed Ms Gigire had bewitched her.

In Marlboro country, smoking 'nurtures talent'


John Garnaut, Beijing August 26, 2012
FEW people outside China have heard of the world's biggest tobacco company, which is so powerful it can brazenly engrave false advertising in huge letters on primary school walls. "Tobacco nurtures talent," says the slogan on the quadrangle wall at a school in Guang'an city, which is co-sponsored by the China Tobacco Corp and the Hope Project of the Communist Youth League. When the students at Sichuan Tobacco Hope School reach the peak of their careers, in about 2050, the number of smoking-related deaths in China will have tripled to about 3 million a year, according to the World Health Organisation.

Cities turn to innovative 'green infrastructure'
From Seattle to Sweden, city and regional governments are using roof gardens, specially designed wetlands, and other forms of 'green infrastructure' to rein in pollution – and to save money.

By Jim Robbins, Yale Environment 360
In Puget Sound, one of America’s great estuaries, killer whales, seals, and schools of salmon swim not far from more than 3 million people who live in the Seattle region. The presence of such impressive marine life, however, belies the fact that the sound is seriously polluted. When it rains, storm water washes into the same system of underground pipes that carries the region’s sewage, and 1 billion gallons a year overflow into the sound when area sewer systems contain more water than can be treated. In addition, motor oil, lawn chemicals, PCBs, heavy metals, pet waste, and many other substances run unabated into the sound, both through the storm water pipes and from roads and other shoreline structures. “The biggest threat to Puget Sound is non-point sources [of pollution],” says Nancy Ahern, Seattle Public Utilities deputy director.

The return of the Indian Pale Ale
"A mug of ale please," calls Kanishk Goswami across the solid wood bar-top.

By Andrew North BBC News, Delhi
Arsenal and other English-football team logos on the walls add to the atmosphere. The barman returns with a large glass tankard of brown ale. Two hundred years since English brewers started shipping strong, extra-hoppy beer to colonialists on the subcontinent, India Pale Ale (IPA) is making a tentative comeback here - in a handful of microbrewery pubs emerging in Gurgaon, the fast-growing business hub on the edge of Delhi. Its main customers so far are the vanguard of the new thrusting India - people like Mr Goswami, a corporate headhunter who set up his company's London operation and got a taste for British beers while there.

U.S. still #1?

The US is the most powerful nation on earth, but its position of global supremacy is being challenged - economically, militarily and politically. And the person many Americans hold responsible for these failings is the president who promised them change.
 
The worldwide economic crisis of 2008 started in the US and the aftershocks are still being felt today. Unemployment is running at more than eight per cent, productivity is down and the national debt is a whopping $137bn.

Such turmoil makes it hard to honour electoral promises.
 
The country is deeply divided. The machinery of government has been tied in knots by partisan bickering and the rise of the right-wing, anti-state Tea Party and the street protests of the left-wing Occupy Wall Street movement are a reminder of how polarised the nation has become.


Joining our conversation in The Cafe in Washington DC are guests:

Amy Goodman is an award-winning journalist and the host of the independent programme, Democracy Now.Goodman is critical of the Obama administration and is worried about the erosion of democracy in the US.
♦Ford O'Connell is a long-time Republican strategist and activist who served on John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign. O'Connell believes Obama has not done enough to create jobs, thinks the bailout of the auto industry has failed and wants the US to take a much more hawkish stance on Iran.
♦Karen Finney is a former adviser to both Bill and Hillary Clinton and a strong supporter of the Obama administration. She was the Democratic National Committee's first African-American communications director.
♦Clarence Page is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune and one of the US' best-known political pundits. Although Page is a supporter of Obama, he believes the president has not done enough to live up to the hope and change message of four years ago.
♦Wajhat Ali is a Muslim American lawyer and a playwright of Pakistani descent. He wrote the first major play about Muslims living in post 9/11 US and is also a co-author of a damning report on Islamophobia.
♦Bruce Fein is a constitution lawyer and proud libertarian. He served as an adviser to the Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul and was associate deputy attorney general under President Ronald Reagan. He is an outspoken critic of US drone strikes.

Palestinian man in handcuffs Tasered by Israeli police in water park-video

A Palestinian man from East Jerusalem is repeatedly Tasered by Israeli security forces, including once after he has been put in handcuffs, while visiting the Meymadion water park in Tel Aviv. 42-year-old Talal Sayyad was visiting the fun park with his wife and children celebrating Eid, when he got involved in a fight between other visitors and police