Spotting the pirates

At least two music shops were looted during the riots that swept Britain earlier this month. In north London, a warehouse containing CDs and DVDs was set on fire. This was devastating for shopkeepers and local residents. But the British media industry may note, cheerily, that its products are still seen as valuable enough to risk a prison sentence. In many countries it is hard to conceive of looters stealing music or films from a store. In a few, it is difficult to imagine that a warehouse filled with recorded music would even exist.
Since 2000, when the file-sharing service Napster first became popular, digital piracy has dogged the media industry. Over time piracy has become more diverse and sophisticated. In some countries, rather than swapping files on peer-to-peer networks, people now stash their loot in private “cyber-lockers”. As broadband speeds have increased, pirates have gone from downloading single songs to grabbing artists’ entire catalogues. Watching pirated television shows and films online has become more popular, too.
Yet piracy has not exactly swept the world. It is endemic in some countries but a niche activity in others. In some places the tide is flowing; in others it appears to be ebbing. In response, media firms are moving their resources from country to country, with potentially large consequences for the global flow of popular culture...

Continur reading

@'The Economist'

Hackers deface Libya's top level domain registry with anti-Gadaffi message

ROFL!!!

(Thanx Stan!)

How the FBI investigates the hacktivities of Anonymous

Peter Ackroyd: 'Rioting has been a london tradition for centuries'

♪♫ Bob Dylan - A Change Is Gonna Come

Dylan performs at the 70th Birthday of the Apollo theatre, bringing the song full circle from it's origins (Sam Cooke wrote it as a response to hearing Dylan's Blowing In The Wind for the first time)

The Informants

James Cromitie was a man of bluster and bigotry. He made up wild stories about his supposed exploits, like the one about firing gas bombs into police precincts using a flare gun, and he ranted about Jews. "The worst brother in the whole Islamic world is better than 10 billion Yahudi," he once said.
A 45-year-old Walmart stocker who'd adopted the name Abdul Rahman after converting to Islam during a prison stint for selling cocaine, Cromitie had lots of worries—convincing his wife he wasn't sleeping around, keeping up with the rent, finding a decent job despite his felony record. But he dreamed of making his mark. He confided as much in a middle-aged Pakistani he knew as Maqsood.
"I'm gonna run into something real big," he'd say. "I just feel it, I'm telling you. I feel it."
Maqsood and Cromitie had met at a mosque in Newburgh, a struggling former Air Force town about an hour north of New York City. They struck up a friendship, talking for hours about the world's problems and how the Jews were to blame.
It was all talk until November 2008, when Maqsood pressed his new friend.
"Do you think you are a better recruiter or a better action man?" Maqsood asked.
"I'm both," Cromitie bragged.
"My people would be very happy to know that, brother. Honestly."
"Who's your people?" Cromitie asked.
"Jaish-e-Mohammad."
Maqsood said he was an agent for the Pakistani terror group, tasked with assembling a team to wage jihad in the United States. He asked Cromitie what he would attack if he had the means. A bridge, Cromitie said.
"But bridges are too hard to be hit," Maqsood pleaded, "because they're made of steel."
"Of course they're made of steel," Cromitie replied. "But the same way they can be put up, they can be brought down."
Maqsood coaxed Cromitie toward a more realistic plan. The Mumbai attacks were all over the news, and he pointed out how those gunmen targeted hotels, cafés, and a Jewish community center.
"With your intelligence, I know you can manipulate someone," Cromitie told his friend. "But not me, because I'm intelligent." The pair settled on a plot to bomb synagogues in the Bronx, and then fire Stinger missiles at airplanes taking off from Stewart International Airport in the southern Hudson Valley. Maqsood would provide all the explosives and weapons, even the vehicles. "We have two missiles, okay?" he offered. "Two Stingers, rocket missiles."
Maqsood was an undercover operative; that much was true. But not for Jaish-e-Mohammad. His real name was Shahed Hussain, and he was a paid informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation...

Continue reading

Trevor Aaronson @'Mother Jones'

Smoking shisha: how bad is it for you?

Alleged Proof of Chinese Government Launching Online Attacks

Marwan Bishara analyses the fight for Tripoli

Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera's senior political analyst, interprets what the fall of Tripoli means for Libya.

After Uprising, Rebels Face a Struggle for Unity

Beating the Odds So Far

UK riots were product of consumerism and will hit economy, says City broker

A masked man in Hackney during the early August riots. The report by Tim Morgan, of Tullett Prebon, says our country's consumerist ethos has 'extremely damaging consequences. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images
The recent riots in London and other big cities were the product of an "out-of-control consumerist ethos" which will have profound impacts for the UK economy, a leading City broker has said.
The report by the global head of research at Tullett Prebon, Tim Morgan, is part of a series in which the brokerage analyses bigger issues for the UK. It details recommendations to resolve what it sees as a political and economic malaise: new role models, policies to encourage savings, the channelling of private investment into creating rather than inflating assets, and greater public investment.
It warns: "We conclude that the rioting reflects a deeply flawed economic and social ethos… recklessly borrowed consumption, the breakdown both of top-end accountability and of trust in institutions, and severe failings by governments over more than two decades."
The note pinpoints the philosophy behind the riots as consumerism.
A typical internet user sees a hundred adverts an hour, the report says, and the underlying message many receive is: "Here's the ideal. You can't have it." Accompanying this is an inflation of government and private debt, a key theme of Morgan's other work.
"The economy has been subjected to repeated 'boom and bust' cycles, above all in property. The overall pattern has been that an over-consuming west has borrowed and spent the surpluses of the increasingly productive and under-consuming East.
"The dominant ethos of 'I buy, therefore I am' needs to be challenged by a shift of emphasis from material to non-material values. David Cameron's 'big society' project may contribute to the inculcation of more socially-oriented values, but much more will need to be done to challenge the out-of-control consumerist ethos.
"The government, too, needs to consume less, and invest more. Government spending has increased by more than 50% in real terms over the last decade, but public investment has languished. Saving needs to be encouraged, and private investment needs to be channelled into asset creation, not asset inflation."
Morgan adds: "A young person who tries to become the next Alan Sugar or James Dyson is as likely to fall short as if he or she sets out to become the next global football star.
"But… failure to become the next Alan Sugar can still leave a person well equipped for a career in management, finance or accountancy. Failure to emulate James Dyson will leave the aspirant with useful engineering or technological skills."
Alex Hawkes @'The Guardian'

Gaddafi's son makes defiant stand

Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam is free

The generation gap, not rap, is to blame for the riots

Nunz With Gunz #4

(Thanx Stan!)