Here

And don’t forget “the Bible guarantees it”.

“…or thy money back you shall get…”

[Quote]:

A former Roman Catholic bishop in Nova Scotia has pleaded guilty to trying to import child pornography after he was arrested in 2009 returning from a trip to Thailand.

[Quote]:

Contrary to statements released by Pakistani intelligence agencies denying any knowledge of the occupants of the Abbottabad compound raided by American Special Forces units on May 1, there is evidence that the occupants of the compound housing Osama bin Laden were well known to Pakistani intelligence from the time the purpose-built compound was finished and occupied in 2005.

[Quote]:

Pakistan’s Washington lobbyists have launched an intense campaign on Capitol Hill to counter accusations that Islamabad was complicit in giving refuge to Osama bin Laden.

Alarmed by lawmakers’ demands to cut off billions of dollars of U.S. aid after bin Laden was found living in a Pakistani safe house for six years, President Asif Ali Zardari has ordered a full-court press to quell mounting accusations that it helped the al Qaeda leader avoid capture.

So the US pays Pakistan loads of money which then uses the money to lobby the US…

[Quote]:

The Wall Street Journal launched a Wikileaks clone, Safehouse, today. The site itself is reportedly crude and insecure, and its terms of service say they will report you to the law or otherwise sell you out if it pleases them:

“We reserve the right to disclose any information about you to law enforcement authorities or to a requesting third party, without notice, in order to comply with any applicable laws and/or requests under legal process, to operate our systems properly, to protect the property or rights of Dow Jones or any affiliated companies, and to safeguard the interests of others.”

Shit sandwiches are on the menu today at Rupert Murdoch’s news empire, but if you’re dumb enough to leak something to it, you’ve really earned yours.

[Quote]:

Late at night, on the outskirts of a big city, they slipped in and got him. It was illegal, a breach of sovereignty, and the host country would later scream blue murder. But it was so compromised by its associations that little attention was paid. When news of the raid got out, and the result was seen for what it was, any cavils about international law were put to one side as the world rejoiced.

The operation of which I speak is, of course, the kidnap of Adolf Eichmann from Argentina by an Israeli squad in 1961 — an event whose initial audacity was quickly consumed by an even more extraordinary act, that of putting Eichmann on trial in Israel, complete with a defence counsel, and a process that many criticised at the time as achingly slow, overly deferential to a man whose identity and guilt was unquestionable, and whose accordance of the notion of possible innocence was a traumatic affront to survivors.

[..]

To win, to triumph, is to defeat an enemy, and the most important part of that victory is to no longer be defined by them. Essential to that victory, is the extension of respect to the vanquished. That may involve mercy, but does not need to. But look at any victor, and you will find some mechanism by which that respect and recognition could be established. The Mongols slaughtered their enemies — and then named their children after them. The Romans tortured rebels as public entertainment — and then extended the Pax Romana to their followers.

Conversely, any victor that cannot manage such a gesture is in deep trouble, because they cannot free themselves from a fight they have already won. And if victory itself cannot free them, what will? Those forces caught in such a loop cannot get out of it, because their own identity is more strongly defined by the way their enemy regards them, than it is by the way they regard themselves. The inability to grant either mercy, or legal formalism, or respect, or to simply move on is an expression of a fatal lack of confidence at the core of the project, a lack of political being.

[Quote]:

John Catt, aged 86, has had his presence at peaceful protests systematically logged by secretive police unit over four years

An 86-year-old man has been granted permission to launch a lawsuit against police chiefs who have classified him as a “domestic extremist” and kept a detailed record of his political activities on a clandestine database.

John Catt, who has no criminal record, is bringing the high court action against a secretive police unit which systematically logged his presence at more than 55 peace and human rights protests over a four-year period.

Some of the entries record his habit of taking out his sketch pad and drawing the scene at demonstrations. Other entries contain notes on his appearance – such as “clean shaven” – and the slogans on his clothes.

His lawsuit will challenge the power of police to compile secret files on law-abiding protesters.

[Quote]:

However, where ICE might have expected a swift take down from Mozilla, the legal and business affairs department of the tech company was not planning to honor the request so easily.

“Our approach is to comply with valid court orders, warrants, and legal mandates, but in this case there was no such court order,” Anderson explains.

According to Anderson complying with the request without any additional information would threaten open Internet principles. So, instead of taking the add-on offline they replied to ICE with a set of 11 well-crafted questions.

Interestingly enough, Mozilla never heard from ICE again.

[Quote]:

O julgamento do Superior Tribunal Federal decidiu hoje que o casamento gay está legalizado no Brasil. Com expressiva maioria de votos os ministros do STF tornaram a união estável homoafetiva legalizada, incluindo o Brasil entre os países que reconhecem o casamento homossexual como comum para a sociedade.

[Quote]:

Billionaire Republican financier David Koch told New York magazine he doesn’t think President Obama “contributed much at all” to the operation that killed Osama bin Laden, and the military and intelligence agencies deserve all the credit.

“[A]ll that Obama did was say ‘yea’ or ‘nay,’ we’re going to take him out or not,” Koch said, while attending the Society of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Spring Ball on Wednesday evening. He went on:

He just made the decision, it was obvious where the guy is. He was one of the worst terrorists organizing attacks on the United States. I mean, no president in his right mind would not approve that decision to go eliminate him. So he’s getting a lot of recognition and his polls have jumped up, but his decision was the easiest of them all. The real hard work was done by the intelligence and the SEALs.

Isn’t that something?

A billionaire CEO type grouses about all the benefits accruing to the guy who makes the decisions as opposed to the guys who actually get their hands dirty. Reminds you of somebody?

My opinion: the reason they don’t release it is that the Seals didn’t kill him in the action, they executed him, which means premeditated murder and the picture shows this. It’s evidence the US committed a (war) crime.

The US should of course be held responsible for the crimes they commit, but in this particular case I’m realistic (or if you want, cynical) enough to shrug it off. Not going to happen. Besides, there are plenty of other things the US has done that deserve prosecution for war crimes and crimes against humanity without the mitigating circumstances you could argue for this particular case.

Malware for the Mac