Friday, May 28, 2010

Sex, lies and videotape: CIA's gay way to unseat Saddam - An Excerpt



Sex, lies and videotape: CIA's gay way to unseat Saddam
PAUL HARRIS, NEW YORK
May 28, 2010

IN THEIR time, America's secret agencies have tried some outlandish schemes to attack their country's enemies, including, most famously, an attempt to do away with Cuba's Fidel Castro by using an exploding cigar.

But in a scenario more the preserve of careless Hollywood starlets such as Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian, the CIA appears to have plotted to undermine Saddam Hussein with a gay sex tape.

According to the Washington Post's security blog, some of America's spooks believed that shooting a fake video of Saddam cavorting with a teenage boy might destabilise his regime in the lead-up to the US-led invasion in 2003.

''It would look like it was taken by a hidden camera. Very grainy, like it was a secret videotaping of a sex session,'' the Post quoted a former CIA official as saying.

Nor was the Saddam sex tape the only idea floating around the more bizarre corners of the CIA's Iraq Operations Group.

Other ploys involved interrupting Iraqi television with a false newsflash that would announce Saddam was handing over power to his hated and feared son Uday. The idea was to shock the Iraqi people into rising up against their leaders and thus make the invasion easier.

Perhaps thankfully, the tape and fake news broadcast were never made and the Post reported that top CIA brass repeatedly rejected the ideas.

But that did not stop a CIA video being shot of a fake Osama bin Laden sitting around a campfire, drinking booze and boasting of his own gay conquests.

The video apparently used some of the CIA's ''darker-skinned'' employees as extras playing the terror chief's henchmen. It does not seem to have been released.

The Post said an anonymous US official had declined to confirm or deny the accounts. ''If these ideas were ever floated by anyone at any time, they clearly didn't go anywhere,'' the official said.

Such tactics are hardly the first time the US agencies have stretched their imaginations.

One such plan was to dispatch Castro by exploiting his taste for scuba diving. A batch of colourful molluscs would be rigged with explosives in the hope that he would be attracted to them. That plan, too, never got off the drawing board.

GUARDIAN

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

You Tube Turns 5 ! - An Excerpt



YouTube Turns 5 Years Old, Invites 2 Billion to Party
By Carl Franzen (May 17, 2010 )


It's the third-most-visited website in the world (behind Google and Facebook), drawing 2 billion-plus viewers daily with its mind-boggling cache of 1,700 years worth of video footage of silly animals, elaborate dance routines and other bizarre, disturbing and amazing phenomena.

Watch YouTube's greatest hits.

Not bad for a company created out of a garage five years ago with little more than a clever idea and a catchy name: YouTube.

Now Google, which purchased the website for a staggering $1.65 billion in 2006, is pulling out all the stops to commemorate YouTube's fifth anniversary this month.

Besides a special logo and triumphant blog post, YouTube has its own "FiveYear" birthday channel, replete with sentimental video homages to the site at its half-decade mark, plus guest-curated compilations of "most essential" clips hosted by the likes of Katie Couric and Conan O'Brien.

"What started as a site for bedroom vloggers and viral videos has evolved into a global platform that supports HD and 3D, broadcasts entire sports seasons live to 200+ countries," the YouTube team wrote on its blog Sunday, when the anniversary page was launched.

Founded by three former employees of the online payment service PayPal, YouTube began as a registered domain address, www.youtube.com, in February 2005. The first video -- "Me at the Zoo," showing co-founder Jawed Karim chatting in front of the elephants at the San Diego Zoo -- was uploaded in late April, but the site was not accessible for public use until May.

According to YouTube co-founder and CEO Chad Hurley, PayPal was just one source of inspiration for the founders. "The same way Flickr created a photo community, we wanted to create a video community," Hurley said in an interview with USA Today's TechnologyLive blog.

From those humble beginnings, YouTube has grown into the premier destination for online video sharing, now logging some 2 billion page views a day -- "nearly double the prime-time audience of all three major U.S. television networks combined," asserts the YouTube blog.

Even so, YouTube is not content to rest on its laurels. Hurley told British newspaper The Telegraph last month that "although YouTube is the most successful video platform, the number of minutes watched, 10 to 15 minutes a day, is small when compared to the five hours watched on the TV set." He went on to say he hoped to erase, if not outright reverse, that disparity in five to 10 years, since "more minutes on our site equals more money."

Indeed, although YouTube bills itself as a "forum for people to connect, inform and inspire others across the globe," the company has faced increasing pressure from shareholders, analysts and observers at large to turn a profit, something it has yet to accomplish but hopes to do for the first time this year.

Since being acquired by Google in 2006, YouTube has actually lost hundreds of millions of dollars every year because of its high operating costs -- namely, maintaining the bandwidth necessary to allow users to upload as much video as they want for free, which currently stands at a rate of 24 hours' worth every minute of the day.

In addition, since a substantial portion of these videos are unauthorized clips from movies and TV programs, YouTube has also been hit by a barrage of copyright lawsuits from companies such as Viacom (which has recently been accused of hiring marketers to secretly upload its own content to the website specifically to support copyright infringement claims).

Several analysts have speculated that YouTube's economics are inherently unsustainable, dooming the website to eventual ruin. But given YouTube's phenomenal growth in viewership and its continued prominence in pop culture -- giving birth to the career of crossover celebrity Justin Bieber, to name one recent example -- others have deemed it a grand slam for Google, financial imbalances aside.

YouTube has lately begun pursuing a variety of innovative revenue-raising strategies, including partnerships with several independent studios to allow for paid rentals of feature films, and with popular Spanish-language TV network Univision to not only upload new programming, but also tack ads onto older, unauthorized Univision clips.

Plus, later this month Google is expected to announce a new TV platform in collaboration with Intel and Sony that will be a "significant breakthrough into the consumer electronics and broadcast industry," in which YouTube is expected to play a major part.

"YouTube is the only place you can put your content on the Web and reach a TV-size audience in every country," said Hunter Walk, YouTube's director of product management, in an interview with the Financial Times.

Moreover, YouTube's Partner Program, started in 2007, has proved eminently profitable for individual content creators, allowing them to take cuts of ad revenue based on the popularity of their videos. Some have even leveraged this program to become millionaires.

Of course, with every success story there are always detractors, and YouTube is no different. Yet in the run-up to the website's five-year anniversary, flak has been coming from a counterintuitive source: "vloggers," or video bloggers, whose very presence is predicated on YouTube.

A few have claimed that in a quest for growth and profitability, YouTube has left them in the dust, allowing their comments sections to be flooded with spam, overlooking them for featured slots and ignoring them on the "FiveYear" channel.

"Celebrate the longtime vloggers like me," demanded vlogger Zennie62 on the San Francisco Chronicle website today. "I've been here since 2006 and a partner since 2007. Because of YouTube I've been on national television a bunch of times and started a new media company. While I owe a lot to YouTube, YouTube owes a lot to me as one of its ambassadors...

"Focus on your small town friends. ... Help us help YouTube."

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Chinglish - The Chinese Way of Speaking English - An Excerpt




Shanghai Is Trying to Untangle the Mangled English of Chinglish
Jackson Lowen for The New York Times

Shanghai has been trying to harness English translations that sometimes wander, like “cash recyling machine.

By ANDREW JACOBS
Published: May 2, 2010



SHANGHAI — For English speakers with subpar Chinese skills, daily life in China offers a confounding array of choices. At banks, there are machines for “cash withdrawing” and “cash recycling.” The menus of local restaurants might present such delectables as “fried enema,” “monolithic tree mushroom stem squid” and a mysterious thirst-quencher known as “The Jew’s Ear Juice.”

Those who have had a bit too much monolithic tree mushroom stem squid could find themselves requiring roomier attire: extra-large sizes sometimes come in “fatso” or “lard bucket” categories. These and other fashions can be had at the clothing chain known as Scat.

Go ahead and snicker, although by last Saturday’s opening of the Expo 2010 in Shanghai, drawing more than 70 million visitors over its six-month run, these and other uniquely Chinese maladaptations of the English language were supposed to have been largely excised.

Well, that at least is what the Shanghai Commission for the Management of Language Use has been trying to accomplish during the past two years.

Fortified by an army of 600 volunteers and a politburo of adroit English speakers, the commission has fixed more than 10,000 public signs (farewell “Teliot” and “urine district”), rewritten English-language historical placards and helped hundreds of restaurants recast offerings.

The campaign is partly modeled on Beijing’s herculean effort to clean up English signage for the 2008 Summer Olympics, which led to the replacement of 400,000 street signs, 1,300 restaurant menus and such exemplars of impropriety as the Dongda Anus Hospital — now known as the Dongda Proctology Hospital. Gone, too, is Racist Park, a cultural attraction that has since been rechristened Minorities Park.

“The purpose of signage is to be useful, not to be amusing,” said Zhao Huimin, the former Chinese deputy consul general to the United States who, as director general of the capital’s Foreign Affairs Office, has been leading the fight for linguistic standardization and sobriety.

But while the war on mangled English may be considered a signature achievement of government officials, aficionados of what is known as Chinglish are wringing their hands in despair.

Oliver Lutz Radtke, a former German radio reporter who may well be the world’s foremost authority on Chinglish, said he believed that China should embrace the fanciful melding of English and Chinese as the hallmark of a dynamic, living language. As he sees it, Chinglish is an endangered species that deserves preservation.

“If you standardize all these signs, you not only take away the little giggle you get while strolling in the park but you lose a window into the Chinese mind,” said Mr. Radtke, who is the author of a pair of picture books that feature giggle-worthy Chinglish signs in their natural habitat.

Lest anyone think it is all about laughs, Mr. Radtke is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in Chinglish at the University of Heidelberg.

Still, the enemies of Chinglish say the laughter it elicits is humiliating. Wang Xiaoming, an English scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, painfully recalls the guffaws that erupted among her foreign-born colleagues as they flipped through a photographic collection of poorly written signs. “They didn’t mean to insult me but I couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable,” said Ms. Wang, who has since become one of Beijing’s leading Chinglish slayers.

Those who study the roots of Chinglish say many examples can be traced to laziness and a flawed but wildly popular translation software. Victor H. Mair, a professor of Chinese at the University of Pennsylvania, said the computerized dictionary, Jinshan Ciba, had led to sexually oriented vulgarities identifying dried produce in Chinese supermarkets and the regrettable “fried enema” menu selection that should have been rendered as “fried sausage.”

Although improved translation software and a growing zeal for grammatically unassailable English has slowed the output of new Chinglishisms, Mr. Mair said he still received about five new examples a day from people who knew he was good at deciphering what went wrong. “If someone would pay me to do it, I’d spend my life studying these things,” he said.

Among those getting paid to wrestle with Chinglish is Jeffrey Yao, an English translator and teacher at the Graduate Institute of Interpretation and Translation at Shanghai International Studies University who is leading the sign exorcism. But even as he eradicates the most egregious examples by government fiat — businesses dare not ignore the commission’s suggested fixes — he has mixed feelings, noting that although some Chinglish phrases sound awkward to Western ears, they can be refreshingly lyrical. “Some of it tends to be expressive, even elegant,” he said, shuffling through an online catalog of signs that were submitted by the volunteers who prowled Shanghai with digital cameras. “They provide a window into how we Chinese think about language.”

He offered the following example: While park signs in the West exhort people to “Keep Off the Grass,” Chinese versions tend to anthropomorphize nature as a way to gently engage the stomping masses. Hence, such admonishments as “The Little Grass Is Sleeping. Please Don’t Disturb It” or “Don’t Hurt Me. I Am Afraid of Pain.”

Mr. Yao read off the Chinese equivalents as if savoring a Shakespearean sonnet. “How lovely,” he said with a sigh.

He pointed out that this linguistic mentality helped create such expressions as “long time no see,” a word-for-word translation of a Chinese expression that became a mainstay of spoken English. But Mr. Yao, who spent nearly two decades working as a translator in Canada, has his limits. He showed a sign from a park designed to provide visitors with the rules for entry, which include prohibitions on washing, “scavenging,” clothes drying and public defecation, all of it rendered in unintelligible — and in the case of the last item — rather salty English. The sign ended with this humdinger: “Because if the tourist does not obey the staff to manage or contrary holds, Does, all consequences are proud.”

Even though he had had the sign corrected recently, Mr. Yao could not help but shake his head in disgust at the memory. And he was irritated to find that a raft of troublesome sign verbiage had slipped past the commission as the expo approached, including a cafeteria sign that read, “The tableware reclaims a place.” (Translation: drop off dirty dishes here.)

“Some Chinglish expressions are nice, but we are not translating literature here,” he said. “I want to see people nodding that they understand the message on these signs. I don’t want to see them laughing.”
_______________________________________________________

From Wikipedia : DEFINITION OF CHINGLISH
Chinglish (simplified Chinese: 中式英语; traditional Chinese: 中式英語; pinyin: Zhōngshì Yīngyǔ) is a portmanteau of the words Chinese and English and refers to spoken or written English which is influenced by Chinese[1]. There are an estimated 300 to 500 million users and/or learners of English in the People's Republic of China[2]. The term "Chinglish" is mostly used in popular contexts and may have pejorative or derogatory connotations[3]. Other terms for the variety of English used in China include "Chinese English," "China English," and "Sinicized English." [4].

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Betty White: Proof You Can Land a Job at Any Age - An Excerpt



Betty White: Proof You Can Land a Job at Any Age
May 9th 2010 8:28AM


By Barbara Safani

Eighty-eight-year-old Betty White just hosted Saturday Night Live. She landed the gig after a couple of well-received performances including the recent Snickers super bowl commercial and an appearance in the movie The Proposal.

But it was probably the Facebook fan group, Betty White to Host SNL (please) that ultimately propelled White to the SNL stage. White landed the gig because she remains relevant to her fans. Other famous people who have remained relevant despite the perception of age include Warren Buffet, Cloris Leachman, Madonna, Cher, Buzz Aldrin, Dara Torres, Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, and Hugh Hefner.


But what about job seekers? Age discrimination is a big concern for many. And everyone seems to have a different cutoff for what they think "too old" is. Some say 40, others say 50 or 60. Perhaps we should all take a lesson from Betty White and her cohorts and concentrate on relevance rather than age. Here are some proactive steps all job seekers can take to make sure age bias is minimized and relevance is optimized.

Resume development

Group earlier experience into a category that reads "Additional Experience." Create an abbreviated overview of the positions you held more than 15 years ago. This allows you to be transparent about earlier experience but keep the focus on the more recent and more relevant accomplishments. Another strategy for older workers is to include a "hobbies" section on the resume. This can help combat age bias if you participate in sports that suggest an active lifestyle. In addition, if you have certain technology skills that prove you are current in your field, add that information as well in a section that lists your key skills and competencies.

Online identity


Some job seekers believe that by not having a picture on online identity and networking sites, they decrease the chance of being discriminated against. I disagree. If you do not post a picture in communities where they are the norm, people will think you have something to hide. Sometimes people post pictures that were taken 10-15 years ago. This could damage your credibility when you actually meet the person who viewed your profile online. Your picture is part of your brand. Pay as much attention to it as you would your other marketing collateral. Lighting, makeup, clothing choice, and an updated hairstyle will help you present your best image while still being transparent and authentic.

Interview strategy


Sometimes when a hiring authority figures out your age, they draw the conclusion that you command a certain salary and that perhaps they won't be able to afford you. When interviewing, if you detect this feeling, be sure to discuss your interest in the position, your desire for meaningful work, and your flexibility. This can help the hiring manager to understand that salary in not necessarily your main motivator. The reality is that many older workers are not more expensive; if anything they are often behind market value because of longevity with a previous employer. Large salary bumps generally occur by switching jobs more frequently, not by staying with the same employer over many years. So the very thing the employer is concerned about might actually turn out to be a non-issue. Better to explore the issue than let the hiring manager come to his own, and possibly incorrect, conclusion.

Job-search research


No one is the right fit for every company. Some companies do have a more youth-oriented culture. But many do not and even tout themselves as best places for boomers or people over 50. AARP publishes a list each year called the Best Employers for Workers Over 50. By targeting the companies that embrace older workers you dramatically decrease the potential for encountering age bias.

Attitude


It sounds so cliché, but it is true. If you believe you are old, others will believe it as well. If you refuse to put arbitrary limitations on age you increase the chances that others will reject these notions as well. Focus on the value you can bring to an employer, not the longevity of your career history. Leverage the latest social media technologies such as Twitter and Facebook to stay connected in current conversations. Ditch phrases such as "back in the day" and "when I was your age." Rewrite the rules.

I take my cues from the people I see making age a non-issue by remaining relevant. It's not just billionaires, TV stars, and rock stars who are doing it successfully. I see examples around me all the time -- and they teach me how to be a little bit more relevant every day.

Britain's New Prime Minister - An Excerpt



New PM Cameron: A Rise From Abject Privilege - An Excerpt
By Theunis Bates

LONDON (May 7) -- If Barack Obama's 2008 presidential success was a tale of triumph over adversity, then David Cameron's victory is one of triumph over prosperity. Because in order to win over the British public -- 36 percent of whom voted for his center-right Conservative Party on Thursday -- the country's new prime minister has had to play down his highly privileged background.

Cameron is everything a leader of modern, egalitarian Britain -- where everyone aspires to be middle class -- should not be: a blue-blooded member of the elite. Born to a stockbroker father and an aristocratic mother, Cameron was educated at Eton College, one of the world's most expensive and exclusive private schools, which has produced 18 past prime ministers. He then went on to study at Oxford, where he joined the infamous Bullingdon Club, the university's own port-guzzling, hell-raising version of Yale's Skull and Bones secret society. (Other past members include Boris Johnson, now the floppy-haired mayor of London.)

However, Cameron knows the importance of image -- he worked as a PR man at a TV company for seven years -- and recognizes that most Brits don't want to be governed by an upper-class toff. So since winning the leadership of the Conservative Party in late 2005, he has tried to make himself seem a little more, well, common. He has claimed that his wife and family don't call him David, but rather use the more down-to-earth "Dave." Cameron's children also attend a non-fee-paying London school, something many of his old Eton classmates would almost certainly call "ghastly."

In the build-up to the May 6 election, his opponents in Gordon Brown's center-left Labour Party -- which served 13 years in power -- attempted to portray Cameron as an aristocratic throwback, someone only interested in helping out his wealthy chums. Brown condemned Cameron's plans to raise the inheritance tax threshold to $1.5 million, which he said would only benefit 3,000 of the Tories' "old friends." At the same time, Labour warned, Cameron would shrink tax breaks and benefits for ordinary British families.

However, Cameron says he is anything but an old-school Tory. Instead he calls himself a "modern, compassionate Conservative." Under his leadership, the Tories have largely shaken off their reputation as the "nasty party," which they acquired during the high-unemployment Margaret Thatcher years, and which condemned them to the opposition benches for more than a decade. Cameron has forced his party to support gay rights and expelled members who believe homosexuals should be discriminated against. He has also spoken out in defense of the minimum wage, green energy and Britain's sometimes troubled but much-loved National Health Service, which more extreme Conservatives dream of dismantling.

Cameron's commitment to the National Health Service is a result of his own family's tragedy. Ivan, his first child with wife Samantha, was born with cerebral palsy and a severe form of epilepsy, conditions requiring around-the-clock care. After Ivan died early last year at the age of 6, the Tory leader spoke of his admiration for the NHS nurses and doctors who "helped every day since he was born." Their kindness and unflinching support, say friends, made Cameron a passionate defender of Britain's health care system.

But Cameron hasn't simply painted a smiley face on the Conservatives. In recent months, as the true scale of Britain's economic crisis has become clear -- the national deficit is at its highest level since World War II -- Cameron has given more hard-line speeches. While he once promised to "share the proceeds of growth" during his early years as Tory leader, he now talks of curtailing immigration, slashing government expenditure and forcing people off benefits and back in to work.

Prime Minister Cameron has an unenviable job ahead of him: He must balance the country's books, without forcing too much hardship on ordinary Brits. And he must do all of this while working together with the center-left Liberal Democrats. If he fails, the Conservatives could once again be dubbed the nasty party, and come the next election in 2015 at the latest, be doomed to another long stretch in opposition.

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

How Faisal Shahzad Was Apprehended, Step by Step - An Excerpt

How Faisal Shahzad Was Apprehended, Step by Step
Updated: 40 minutes ago


Carl Franzen Contributor - AOL News
(May 4) -- On Saturday evening, Times Square was packed to the gills with thousands of theatergoers as well as those just out to enjoy the first spell of truly warm weather in New York City in weeks. But by 8 p.m., the area was nearly deserted -- all had been evacuated because of a smoking SUV later found to contain a botched car bomb.

In the heart of the most crowded city in the United States, locating the perpetrator appeared to be a tall order indeed, even for the most adept law enforcement officers and intelligence agents. Yet by late Monday night, a little more than 48 hours later, a primary suspect was in federal custody. And he has now been charged with five terrorism-related counts.

Just how did officials track and apprehend Faisal Shahzad so quickly? AOL News retraces their steps:

1. The Vehicle

The 1993 black Nissan Pathfinder identified by authorities as the intended "weapon of mass destruction" was equipped with a homemade bomb made up of three propane tanks, 152 M-88 fireworks, three full propane gas canisters, two 5-gallon gasoline containers, two alarm clock timers connected to wires and a 78-pound metal gun locker containing several bags of nonexplosive fertilizer. Though apparently activated, the device failed to detonate and was later disarmed by the New York Police Department's bomb squad, giving investigators a "treasure trove" of evidence.

The automobile was promptly removed from the scene and taken to an NYPD forensics lab in Jamaica, Queens, where investigators made an initial sweep and found it contained no fingerprints or DNA. They also observed that it had stolen license plates and that the vehicle identification sticker had been scratched off the driver's-side door.

Yet the vehicle identification number stamped on the engine block and axles was still intact, meaning authorities could use it to track down the original owner. She turned out to be a 19-year-old Bridgeport, Conn., college student named Peggy Colas. Federal investigators interviewing Colas learned that she had sold the car on April 28 after posting an ad for it on Craigslist.

2. Craigslist

The online marketplace famous for its low-key, anything-goes approach -- and infamous for some high-profile crimes linked to its postings -- proved to be instrumental both in the bomb plot and the subsequent investigation. Colas told authorities that she had sold the Pathfinder for $1,300 to a man she described as "Middle Eastern or Hispanic," who had responded via e-mail to her Craigslist ad. Investigators found the record of the ad and were able to identify Shahzad as the sender of the e-mail. Craigslist requires buyers to communicate with sellers via a valid e-mail address, but does not screen for newly created or proxy addresses -- which means that if Shahzad had created a "dummy" e-mail address under another name, the link might have been lost.

3. The Cell Phone

In addition to contacting Colas via e-mail, Shahzad also called her using a disposable cell phone, according to Politico. While Shahzad had tossed the phone by the time authorities caught up to him at John F. Kennedy International Airport on Sunday night, agents used an electronic database to trace it back to his original purchase.

4. The Surveillance Cameras

A recent CBS News report says Times Square is equipped with up to 200 individual surveillance cameras -- including 82 owned by the city alone -- that are constantly "observing every move" pedestrians make. Yet only a handful caught the 1993 Pathfinder as it made its way around the block and parked "haphazardly" on West 45th Street, and apparently none got a clear shot of the perpetrator.

Furthermore, as The Washington Post notes, the initial "person of interest" -- a balding man captured on surveillance footage -- may have not have been involved in the failed bombing. The Post and others have made the case that this exemplifies the limitations of even the most powerful closed-circuit security systems.

But as Slate counters, surveillance cameras did end up playing a major role in nailing the suspect -- just not the ones in Times Square. Instead, that honor belongs to the security feed in a Bridgeport shopping center, which recorded Shahzad taking the Pathfinder on a test-drive before purchasing it from Colas.

5. The Last-Minute Dash

After investigators had amassed sufficient evidence pointing to Shahzad as the prime suspect, on Sunday they alerted U.S. agencies, including Customs and Border Protection, to his possible involvement. Yet they still had to act quickly to apprehend Shahzad, who had by then boarded a plane headed for Dubai. A last-minute air traffic control call to the plane as it taxied on the runway prevented him from making his way to his destination, where any arrest would have faced an array of geopolitical hurdles, if he had been detained at all.