Murder Cop: Take Babies’ DNA
December 12th, 2006Via: The Sun:
BRITAIN’S most senior murder investigator has called for DNA to be taken from babies.
Commander Dave Johnston said it would build up a database to SOLVE crimes and PREVENT others.
He said samples could also be taken from Britons renewing passports and from migrants arriving here. The head of the Met Police’s Homicide and Serious Crime Unit, went on: “We have 300,000 unsolved cases where we have taken a profile at a crime scene but have not yet matched it.
“As well as solving crime, it would really make someone think twice about committing crime if they knew their DNA was on a database.
“There is also a compelling case for taking DNA from people when they die, so that we can cleanse the database.â€
There are already three million profiles — covering six per cent of the population — on the National DNA Database, set up in 1999.
Research Credit: West
Police Officer Escorts a Child to Use the Bathroom
December 11th, 2006Update:
Justin Cook, the photographer who made the image below, wrote to me, requesting that I remove the image because he held the copyright and I wasn’t authorized to use the image. I indicated that I would not remove the image and that he should read about Fair Use. He asked me to remove it again. I refused, again.
He then told me that my original headline, “North Carolina: Child Uses Toilet at Gunpoint,” was misleading. I said that I printed the entire caption that was originally provided with the image. I also offered to print his clarification of the circumstances surrounding the situation in the photo and change the headline, but again refused to remove the photo.
Here is Justin’s clarification about the situation:
CLARIFICATION:
“Basically this was a standard search warrant situation on a known drug house. The child is not being held at gunpoint. His mother was detained and the officer simply walked him to the bathroom. The officer never pointed the gun at the child, in fact moments before this photo was taken, the officer and child were goofing off on the front porch. It was a very surreal situation, they were high fiving each other, the child even hugged him at one point and took his flashlight. Simply the officers had taken a liking to the child and when he needed to pee one walked him to the bathroom and remained with him to maintain control of the situation. The officers are never to surrender or abandon their weapon at any time during the raid, and no person at the house is to go unwatched during the course of a search.”
The militarization of domestic law enforcement is one of the sickest aspects of America’s decent into fascism. While I’m glad that Justin provided clarification to the situation—I am always willing to provide clarification to ANY story on Cryptogon when it is necessary—it doesn’t change my opinion of the horrible nature of the situation that is depicted.
I wish Justin wasn’t attempting to get sites to remove his excellent work.
—END UPDATE—
Via: Cpoy:
Photo by: Justin Cook – University of North Carolina
A member of the Durham Police Department Selective Enforcement Team escorts a child to use the bathroom after serving a search warrant at a suspected drug house. Working closely with the police department’s Gang Units, SET is responsible for making high-risk entries into dwellings to serve search warrants. Gang Unit Two made two controlled buys, or drug purchases, from the home with the help of an informant, giving them probable cause for a search warrant. Even if a raid doesn’t turn up anything, presence and show of force sends a hard message to the neighborhood that gang and drug activity will not be tolerated.
Research Credit: The Agitator
RUMOR: Aqua to be Replaced with Illuminous
December 11th, 2006Illuminous.
I thought I was being funny when I made this silly collage to go along with this story about OSX on Intel from 2005:
Nerd World Order?
Illuminous.
You really couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried. Man, I hope the install disk comes with a roll of tinfoil!
Via: Apple Gazette:
Apple Gazette has received a tip from an apple insider that the Mac OS Aqua User Interface will be replaced with a new UI named Illuminous.
The source goes on to say that we will see a demonstration of Illuminous at Macworld 2007.
Diana Stalked by U.S. National Security Agency “Because of the Company She Kept”
December 11th, 2006I was wondering if the British press was allowed to mention the U.S. National Security Agency??? I guess it’s ok as long as they don’t make it a proper noun. Are British reporters ignorant of simple grammar rules? They seem to get it right with MI5 and MI6.
Via: This is London:
American intelligence agencies were bugging Princess Diana’s telephone over her relationship with a US billionaire, the Evening Standard has learned.
She was even forced to abandon a planned holiday with her sons in the US with tycoon Teddy Forstmann on advice from secret services, who passed on their concerns to their British counterparts.
Both US and British intelligence then forced Diana to change her plans to stay with Mr Forstmann in the summer of 1997, saying it was too “dangerous” to take her sons there.
Instead the princess took the fateful decision to take a summer break with Harrods owner Mohamed Fayed. This ultimately led to her going to Paris with his son Dodi, where they died in a car crash.
The revelation from independent inquiries by the Evening Standard comes as it emerged that Princess Diana’s phone was bugged by US intelligence agencies on the night she died without the permission of the British secret intelligence services.
Authoritative leaks say the extraordinary revelations will be published this week by Lord Stevens and is bound to raise fresh questions about conspiracy theories.
…
The Evening Standard also understands that US secret services have a number of secret files on Diana and her closest associates that are held by the national security agency. The files, which include reports from foreign intelligence – thought to include MI5 and MI6 – come under both top secret and secret categories.The reports cannot be released because of “exceptionally grave damage to the national security”. The documents on the princess seem to have arisen because of the company she kept rather than through any attempt to target her.
Torture Inc. America’s Brutal Prisons
December 11th, 2006Did you think Abu Ghraib was bad? Take a look at what goes on in prisons inside America…
WARNING: Graphic violence, torture.
Economic Storm Brewing in America
December 11th, 2006Via: Telegraph:
The world economy is what matters, and I don’t like the smell of it. Nor, apparently, does Hank Paulson, who made $700 million at Goldman Sachs before taking over the US Treasury this year. He has reactivated a crisis team with a command centre in Washington to cope with the “systemic risk” in a market melt-down. His worry? 8,000 unregulated hedge funds with $1.3 trillion at hand, and derivative contracts now worth $370 trillion. “We need to be very careful here,” he said.
Related: Plunge Protection Team Active
Related: Do You Actually Own the Stocks in Your Portfolio?
Related: The Eerie “Bid” in the Equity Markets
Related: U.S., CHINA and EUROPE: FINGERS ON TRIGGERS IN MEXICAN STANDOFF
Droves Say Goodbye to Golden State
December 11th, 2006Via: Mercury News:
The Browns are an example of what demographers say appears to be an unprecedented phenomenon — even in a good economy, more people are leaving California for other states than are arriving from the rest of the country.
Between 2004 and 2005, the migration flow into California from the other 49 states started flowing the other way. Data from the state Department of Finance shows that, for the first time this decade, more people left California in 2005 for another state than the number who moved in. Mary Heim, a finance department demographer, says this particular kind of outflow will continue for the foreseeable future.
Unlike the tens of thousands who left Silicon Valley following the tech bust earlier this decade, the new migration is about the quest for something besides a job: a better quality of life at a lower cost of living.
Oil Producers Shun Dollar
December 10th, 2006Via Financial Times:
Oil producing countries have reduced their exposure to the dollar to the lowest level in two years and shifted oil income into euros, yen and sterling, according to new data from the Bank for International Settlements.
The revelation in the latest BIS quarterly review, published on Monday, confirms market speculation about a move out of dollars and could put new pressure on the ailing US currency.
Market liquidity is traditionally low in December, and many traders have locked in profits, potentially reinforcing volatility.
Russia and the members of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, the oil cartel, cut their dollar holdings from 67 per cent in the first quarter to 65 per cent in the second.
Meanwhile, they increased their holdings of euros from 20 to 22 per cent, the BIS said. The speed of the shift may help to explain the weakness of the dollar, which recently fell to a 20-month low against the euro and a 14-year low against sterling.
The BIS, the central bank for the developed world’s central banks, is customarily cautious in its language. However, it noted: “While the data are not comprehensive, they do appear to indicate a modest shift over the quarter in the US dollar share of reporting banks’ liabilities to oil exporting countries.â€
The review shows that Qatar and Iran, whose foreign exchange policy has sparked widespread market speculation, cut their dollar holdings by $2.4bn and $4bn respectively.
Such shifts may be modest compared with the total assets held, but they provide a crucial indication on future thinking.
Currency switches are likely to be progressive, subtle and discreet, as untoward attention could hit the dollar, lowering the value of depositors’ remaining dollar-denominated assets.
NSA Ghosts Danced Around Diana
December 10th, 2006But, as usual, there’s nothing to see here. Accidents happen… Never mind the involvement of an unknown number of intelligence agencies. Oh no. Never mind any of that. That was just a coincidence.
Note: There’s almost certainly a problem with the terminology used in the article. The article uses the following phrases:
- “The American secret service”
- “the US security service”
- “the surveillance arm of the US”
While I’m not completely sure, these are probably references to the U.S. National Security Agency (with tasking from CIA?) and not the U.S. Secret Service, which mostly handles physical security of U.S. government officials and counterfeiting issues related to U.S. currency and other financial instruments.
Is the British “free press” allowed to print the words “U.S. National Security Agency” or will that get them a DA-Notice?
Via: Observer/Guardian:
The American secret service was bugging Princess Diana’s telephone conversations without the approval of the British security services on the night she died, according to the most comprehensive report on her death, to be published this week.
Among extraordinary details due to emerge in the report by former Metropolitan police commissioner Lord Stevens is the revelation that the US security service was bugging her calls in the hours before she was killed in a car crash in Paris.
In a move that raises fresh questions over transatlantic agreements on intelligence-sharing, the surveillance arm of the US has admitted listening to her conversations as she stayed at the Ritz hotel, but failed to notify MI6. Stevens is understood to have been assured that the 39 classified documents detailing Diana’s final conversations did not reveal anything sinister or contain material that might help explain her death.
Massive Insider Selling
December 9th, 2006What are they going to do with the cash? Do the rats have anywhere to hide their cheese?
Via: NY Post:
America’s corporate chiefs are unloading their own stocks at one of the boldest paces in 20 years.
In cases of the very rich, such as Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Google’s top brass, the executives are selling a whopping $63 for each $1 of stock they bought, says a report by Bloomberg.
In November alone, leaders of public companies dumped $8.4 billion worth of stock they owned as insiders, most of it awarded as compensation, bonuses or other management incentives.
