Illegal torture equipment – right on your doorstep! The adverts shaming Britain’s arms trade

“Horrific killer drones! Ankle-shattering leg irons! Cluster bombs! And electric stun batons that cause excruciating pain but leave no trace!” The cheery voice and cartoon imagery leave no doubt that this advert for the world’s biggest arms fair is a sharp spoof, produced for Amnesty International to highlight the British government’s willingness to flog weapons to repressive regimes via the Defence and Security Equipment International’s jamboree at the ExCeL Centre in London’s Docklands.

But a separate campaign is also leading to many posters cropping up at bus stops and on tube trains that require a second glance. “Important announcement, Travelling on the DLR from 15th to 18th September?” reads one, using London Underground fonts and branding with the DLR line turning into the image of a tank. “This September, a swarm of arms dealers will be descending on the DLR … Customers are requested to help stop the arms fair.”

The 300 posters are by artists who exhibited work at the Museum of Cruel Designs (PDF) in Banksy’s Dismaland. A collective called the Special Patrol Group helped distribute it around London using “Ad Space Hack Packs”, a £6 pack of Allen keys which it claims “gain access to around a third of bus stop advertising space on the planet”. (Transport for London is not amused by this flyposting “vandalism”.)

More at the The Guardian

The Spies Who Fooled the World

BBC Panorama: On the eve of the tenth anniversary of the Iraq War, Panorama reveals how key aspects of the secret intelligence used to justify the invasion were based on fabrication and lies.

Olympics firm, G4S, in Israeli Security Controversy

Leaked Video Shows US Contractors Randomly Killing Civilians

Employees of the US military contracting group Academi (formerly Xe, Blackwater USA and Blackwater Worldwide) are seen in new leaked video shooting their machine guns at random while driving through the streets of Baghdad, crashing into other cars and even running over a pedestrian without hesitation. Academi received a $250 million contract by the Obama administration to provide military services in Afghanistan.  The Daily Conversation

Also see “The Warrior Class”: The Blackwater Videos on Harpers - Academi (aka Blackwater) on Wikipedia

Second protester shot dead in Saudi Arabia

Saudi security forces shot one person dead and injured three others during what the country's state news agency described as "clashes" in the oil-producing Eastern Province. Activists and witnesses said Friday's casualties came when security forces opened fire on an anti-government demonstration in the Qatif district.

"While security men were following up on an illegal gathering in the town of Awwamiya in Qatif on Friday they were attacked by gunfire," a police statement on the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) said on Friday. "They dealt with the situation by firing back, which resulted with the death of one." The SPA also said a protester was killed and three others were wounded in clashes on Thursday.

Activists and witnesses said that security forces opened fire when a Shia procession marking the birthday of the Prophet Mohammad - a celebration forbidden in ultra-conservative Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia - turned into a demonstration for reform and the release of detainees.

Al Jazeera English

UN: Syria death toll tops 2,700

Syrian security forces have killed 2,700 people since anti-government protesters started six months ago, the United Nations human rights office said. "As of today, 2,700 people, including at least 100 children, have been killed by military and security forces since mass protests erupted in mid-March," Kyung-wha Kang, deputy UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said on Monday.

She said "the scale and nature of these acts may amount to crimes against humanity" and that her office was prepared to send its confidential list of 50 suspects linked to those crimes to the International Criminal Court, if the UN Security Council refers the situation in Syria to the Hague-based court.

She called on President Bashar al-Assad's government to co-operate with an international inquiry into the bloodshed so as to ensure accountability for all violations and to "break the culture of impunity in the country". Assad has repeatedly said Syria is facing a "foreign conspiracy" and has blamed most of the deaths on "armed criminals".

More on Al Jazeera English - Syria Live Blog

More deaths reported as Syrian security forces mount crackdown in cities

Syrian security forces have killed 47 people when they stormed cities across the country looking for army defectors and seeking to prevent the breakout of mass protests following the weekly Friday prayers, the revolution commission said.

At least six people were killed in the flashpoint city of Hama when troops and security forces raided the town. “They raided Hilfaya at 6:30 a.m. (0330 GMT), with troops and security police descending from buses and trucks equipped with machine guns,” one of the activists told Reuters by telephone. “They stayed for two hours, firing at random to frighten the inhabitants. Among the six who were killed were two cousins from the al-Jammal family who were on their way to Hilfaya from the nearby village of Taybeh,” the activist said.

alArabiya

Tripoli Files Show CIA Working With Libya

The Central Intelligence Agency and Libyan intelligence services developed such a tight relationship during the George W. Bush administration that the U.S. shipped terror suspects to Libya for interrogation and suggested the questions they should be asked, according to documents found in Libya's External Security agency headquarters.

The relationship was close enough that the CIA moved to establish "a permanent presence" in Libya in 2004, according to a note from Stephen Kappes, at the time the No. 2 in the CIA's clandestine service, to Libya's then-intelligence chief, Moussa Koussa.  Full story on The Wall Street Journal

(September 2008) The Bush Administration considers Libya's reform as one of its top foreign policy achievements, and a model for other adversary states, such as Iran. The Rice appearance was the highest-level US visit since then vice-president Richard Nixon stopped in Libya in 1957.
Read more on The Age

Obama's war on truth tellers

National Security Agency whistleblower Thomas Drake faces 35 years in prison on espionage charges for allegedly leaking information to the press about the NSA's overspending and failure to properly maintain its large trove of domestic spy data.
"Espionage is the last thing my whistleblowing and first amendment activities and actions were all about," Drake said recently in a public speech. "This has become the specter of a truly Orwellian world where whistleblowing has become espionage."

DemocracyNow.org - Brasscheck TV

Iraq: Protest Organizers Beaten and Detained

Iraqi security forces arrested more than a dozen activists here over the past week in a sweep that rights groups called a pre-emptive strike to prevent a flickering reform movement from springing back to life.

Ali Abdul Khaliq al-Jaf is one of four students still in jail in Baghdad. Their parents have been unable to get information.

Elsewhere in Iraq, in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province west of Baghdad, a series of explosions on Thursday aimed at security forces killed 15 people and wounded 20, local officials said.

The detentions in Baghdad came just days before the government faces a self-imposed deadline to demonstrate improvements in services and government reforms. Some analysts have said that if this date passes without significant reforms, there could be new rounds of reinvigorated demonstrations.

New York Times