"Here are the five most important questions about Beijing's defense strategy that remain stubbornly unanswered."

"Forty-nine mutilated bodies were found dumped along a highway on Sunday near Monterrey, Mexico’s third-largest city, according to officials."

@jackieearle: @warrenellis Big Brother test site??? http://t.co/Jlu71uCw http://twitter.com/jackieearle/status/201715438760116226

"This post shows analysis of all 17 letters using Recorded Future’s temporal analytic technology and intelligence analysis tools."

"Claimed to be near invisible to radar and able to dominate any future battlefield, the F-35 will replace most of the air-combat aircraft in the inventories of the U.S. Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and at least nine foreign allies, and it will be in those inventories for the next 55 years. It's no secret, however, that the program -- the most expensive in American history -- is a calamity."

"Not only are high officials and former officials of the Israeli security establishment pushing hard back against Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s seeming rush to war with Iran, they appear actually to be attempting to unseat him, as it becomes possible that Israel may go to early elections in September."

"As the pictures were shown to the court, Mrs Sebire and coroner Fiona Wilcox agreed that at no point did anyone seem to be following him." Because, of course, if you were a kill team tasked to kill a man without leaving an obvious cause of death, fold his body into a holdall and padlock it shut, and then probably leave four years' worth of women's clothes in his flat, you'd be DAMN sure to get yourself seen on CCTV, wouldn't you?

"South Sudan announced last week that it was withdrawing from the disputed Heglig border region in order to avoid all-out war, but the scope of the current attacks seem to go beyond Heglig, and Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has vowed not to negotiate until all South Sudanese troops are out of Sudan since southern leaders “do not understand anything but the language of the gun and ammunition." Last week, he referred to the South Sudanese leadership as "insects" and vowed to drive them from power."

"There were two "moments" in the defeat of liberal centrist politics in Germany, Austria, Spain etc. in the 1930s: the first, where polite society realised the working classes were swinging to the right and left, but patronisingly reassured themselves that the world of Jazz, surrealist poetry and foreign holidays could never end. That is, they said to themselves: the workers are clinging to the past, but we, avatars of a more liberal and progressive future, have economic history with us, which points only in the direction of liberalism and economic co-operation."

"East Africa's most populous city, Nairobi, is a booming metropolis, regional headquarters to major international corporations like Coca-Cola and Google, and filled with upwardly mobile urban dwellers. And all the trash they produce has to go somewhere. It ends up in Dandora, the city's only municiple dumpsite, where thousands of workers -- men, women, and children -- pick through refuse daily, looking for food and recyclable scraps to sell. It's a hard, toxic life -- but it's also the only job available..."

"Things got a bit odd with Assange's last question, in which he asked the reglious extremist, "Isn’t Allah, or the notion of God, the ultimate superpower? Shouldn’t you as a freedom fighter also seek to liberate people from the totalitarian concept of a monotheistic god"

"Guinea-Bissau, an impoverished former Portuguese colony, has been plagued by a long series of coups since gaining independence in 1974 - and has recently become an important staging post for gangs smuggling drugs from Latin America to Europe."

"‘When I got to Bab Dreib, there were 16 corpses, all women and children. Some of the children had been hit on the head with sharp objects. The brain was outside the skull’"

“Underlying the ‘pivot’ is a conviction that the center of gravity for U.S. foreign policy, national security, and economic interests is being realigned and shifting towards Asia, and that U.S. strategy and priorities need to be adjusted accordingly,”

Since the launch involved a classified cargo for the National Reconnaissance Office, no details were immediately available about whether it was boosted to its intended orbit.

"With the world's second-highest homicide rate, (around 66 per 100,000 people) it's not surprising that El Salvador might take drastic measures to stop the killing. But a sudden drop in homicides is raising questions about just what the infamous MS-13 gang is getting in return..."

"Cap Amadou Sanogo told the BBC he overthrew the government on Wednesday in order to restore security."

"Lincoln gave four major speeches during his presidency; FDR gave only four fireside chats during his first year. Barack Obama gave over 500 speeches and major remarks during his first 365 days in office."

"Section 7 of the 1994 Intelligence Services Act offers protection not only to spies involved in bugging or bribery, but also to any who become embroiled in far more serious matters, such as murder, kidnap or torture – as long as their actions have been authorised in writing by a secretary of state."

"The battle between the Prime Minister and the former spymasters got so intense that Netanyahu ordered an investigation into leaks about an impending Israeli attack on Iran, which he believed had been perpetrated by the retired spooks. How do we know about this secret leak investigation? The Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz picked up a report from a Kuwaiti newspaper which cited an unnamed Israeli source. Such arcane telegraphs reek of covert struggle. The public is the last to know what’s really going on, or why."

"The North Korea drones are based on Raytheon’s MQM-107D Streaker target drones, which are used by the U.S. Army, and imported from a Middle East nation believed to be Syria, Yonhap news agency reported."

"We needed a court order to eavesdrop on him," Hayden notes, "but we didn't need a court order to kill him. Isn't that something?"

"The Arab uprisings, however, have shifted the dynamics of the struggle. With the regime's firepower focused on dissenters in the major cities, Saada quietly slid out of its control. A mini-state has sprung up, run almost entirely by the Houthis, who have taken on the responsibilities of government. They have appointed their own governor (a notorious arms dealer), police the streets, and rebuilt schools and houses destroyed in the war. Despite their efforts, Saada remains a destitute city, filled with sprawling graveyards, bullet-pocked mud-brick houses and lean-looking children on crutches hobbling frantically alongside lines of moving traffic, begging for food and money."

"Paddy Ashdown claims that we are living in a moment in history where power is changing in ways it never has before. In a spellbinding talk at TEDxBrussels he outlines the three major global shifts that he sees coming." Also, a quote: "Mao described (WW1 and WW2) as 'the European Civil Wars.'"

"Navalny's more nationalist views are troubling. Last year he spoke at the Russky Marsh, where some protesters made Nazi salutes. He has also endorsed a movement called Enough of Feeding the Caucasus, which protests against the theft of state funding but which critics see as xenophobic. And a video that Navalny recorded for Narod several years ago called for arming the population to shoot Chechen bandits."

"The Occupy Network/Brand is a perma protest against the future. ". interesting characterisation of Occupy, with many facets to it, some presumably unintended by the author.

"When Foreign Policy asked the International Crisis Group to evaluate which manmade disasters could explode in the coming year, we put our heads together and came up with 10 crisis areas that warrant particular concern."

"I want to tell an odd, romantic, but ultimately very sad story that shows where this fear of possession on the left comes from. It is set during last the time that British, European and American students tried to be a vanguard for revolution. It shows how that fear can easily lead to a pessimistic belief that all one's dreams for a better future are just illusions - and how that pessimism then came to paralyse the left in Britain throughout the eighties and nineties." I rarely completely agree with Adam Curtis' work, but find his arguments fascinating.

"Crouch is registered at Companies House as a director under the name Stephen Crouch Plantard de St Clair. Pierre Plantard de St Clair was a notorious French hoaxer who died in 2000, and who fabricated the legend of the so-called Priory of Sion, which figured in the best-selling fantasy thriller The Da Vinci Code."

"The city of Paris has a deputy mayor of the night. It is hard to think of a bureaucratic job title with more global cool cachet, even if large parts of the job involve overseeing sanitation, street repairs and other decidedly unromantic and underappreciated nighttime activities which make cities functional places to exist."

"A banking scandal, identified by Iranian authorities as the "largest embezzlement in the country's banking history", has further shaken confidence in the government whose legitimacy was already under question after the contested results of the 2009 presidential election."

"A new poverty-stricken Muppet will highlight the issue of hunger struggles on an episode of "Sesame Street", the show said in a statement on Tuesday. Pink-faced Muppet Lily, whose family deals with food insecurity, will join Big Bird, Elmo and other favorites on a one-hour prime-time special featuring country star Brad Paisley and his wife Kimberly Williams Paisley called "Growing Hope Against Hunger," to air Oct 9."

"As the light fades and the rain starts to come down hard, hundreds of protesters, reporters and members of the press are still trapped on the bridge. In the pouring drizzle, they strap their backpacks onto their fronts so the police can't take them, according to Kristen Gwynne, a New York writer. Gwynne tells Alternet that protesters are singing to keep morale up: 'this little light of mine.' Hundreds more are cuffed and on vans headed to jail. "I had a feeling as soon as we walked onto the bridge that this wasn't going to end well," says Michael, a member of the march. "The police allowed people to go on the car ramp on the bridge, and when they realised what was happening, people started jumping onto the pedestrian side, but then it was too late.""

"ON THE evening of September 24th a power cut plunged almost 10m Chileans, more than half the population, into darkness. Copper mines shut down, traffic lights failed and Saturday night revellers in Santiago found themselves dancing in the dark. Power was restored within a few hours, but the blackout was a worrying foretaste of what may be to come."

"Urbanization in China--explosive and seemingly boundless in potential--has in some cities reached a 'natural' obstacle. A vast ring of post-industrial sites surrounds cities like Tianjin, Guangzhou and Shanghai. Although the factories have moved further afield, the remaining land and groundwater is often seriously contaminated."

"According to the World Bank, in 2008 46 percent of Indian urbanites – or nine out of every ten living in a slum – lacked “improved sanitation facilities”, meaning that people living within them lack sewerage and public toilets3. Where community toilets do exist, poor maintenance and overuse often render them unsanitary before long. For example, a survey of 151 slum settlements in Mumbai conducted by Mahila Milan/NSDF found that there were 3,433 municipal toilet seats, 80 percent of which were not working, to serve one million people – a ratio of one toilet for every 1,488 people4. Likewise, a 1993 survey of half a million slum-dwellers in Kanpur found that 66 percent had no toilets. Lacking facilities, they shit in the open or in waterways."

'In his book The One Percent Doctrine, journalist Ron Suskind reported on CIA plans, unveiled in September 2001 and known as the “Worldwide Attack Matrix,” for “detailed operations against terrorists in 80 countries.” '

"My students were former child soldiers. Let me say that after the
schools had been out of business for more than 10 years, say starting
around 1990, the wars were more like Lord of the Flies with pickup
trucks, automatic rifles, light and heavy machineguns, and mortars...

"...Illiterate 20-somethings leading uneducated armed bands of teens and children across the countryside, enticed by rice and magic. And some drugs, it's true, but chiefly rice and magic. These were hungry children empowered by an AK-47 and some sadistic charismatic leaders.

"...Funny how quickly a new generation will believe in the power of magic in as few as 10 or 12 years after the schools close."

"South Korean officials have arrested a North Korean defector on suspicion of plotting to kill high-profile activist Park Sang-hak, reports from Seoul say."

"Indians of the Guarani tribe in Brazil have demanded that energy giant Shell stop using their ancestral land for ethanol production."

"“Since the Taliban moved in, we can plant the poppy. The people are not starving anymore, because they have opium. And if the government tries to bully us, we have weapons.”"

This is one of a series of attacks on these Guarani since the beginning of August 2011. It follows attempts by the Indians to reclaim their ancestral land, which was seized by ranchers in the 1970s and has been occupied ever since.

Two posters left near the bodies declared that the pair -- a young man and woman -- were killed for posting denouncements of drug cartel activities on a social network.

"His radical methods included a “vaccine against violence,” and firing all 3,200 of the notoriously corrupt traffic police and rehiring 400 of them as mime artists to manage the city’s traffic."

"an "encounter killing" -- an extrajudicial execution framed to look like the police foiled a bona fide terrorist attack. In some cases the victim is killed while in custody or after having been unofficially arrested, and brought to a (usually) isolated location where the officers later announce they had prevailed in a shoot-out with a hardened criminal or hard-core terrorist."

Turkish prime minister warns further sanctions likely after Israel refuses to apologise for 2010's deadly raid on aid flotilla

Working with the CIA, the New York Police Department maintained a list of "ancestries of interest" and dispatched undercover officers to monitor Muslim businesses and social groups, according to new documents that offer a rare glimpse inside an intelligence program the NYPD insists doesn't exist.

To promote greater transparency in Chile, Poderopedia (Powerpedia) will be an editorial and crowdsourced database that highlights the links among the country’s elite. Using data visualization, the site will investigate and illustrate the connections among people, companies and institutions, shedding light on any conflicts of interests. Crowdsourced information will be vetted by professional journalists before it is posted. Entries will include an editorial overview, a relationship map and links to the sources of information.

..."about 80% of the businesses in Mexico are involved in one manner or another with the drug racket. Now once you start publishing things like that and looking into it, you’re getting to the power centers of Mexican society, and they’re simply not going to want to be exposed." If they can use the drug assassins to stop it, they will.

"Many communities previously relied on the drug gangs for services from water to wireless internet, and critics have pointed out that the state has been slow to replace them."

The programme examines a fascinating transcript of a conversation between President Nixon and Henry Kissinger which reveals the depth of the US antagonism towards Edward Heath's pro-European stance.

Now young girls are being sold, according to locals, for as little as 15,000 Kenyan shillings ($168).

"So, the Adaptive Journey service I describe isn’t possible at the moment, because you can’t get at the user data without breaking TfL’s terms and conditions. Nevertheless, the “We see you’re doing this, perhaps you’d find it better to do that” design pattern is a powerful one, if used properly." Yeah, crossref with @TowerBridge there, Ben. good read, though.

"Swyngedouw points to a climate of global consensus that has become pervasive over the past twenty years, effectively suppressing dissent and excluding most people from governance. He explains this consensus as limited to a select group (e.g., elite politicians, business leaders, NGOs, experts from a variety of fields) and perpetuated through "empty signifiers" like the sustainable/creative/world-class city. He argues that this consensus serves a "post-political" neoliberal order in which governments fail to address citizens' most basic needs in order to subsidize the financial sector and take on grandiose projects designed to attract global capital."

"Six Scottish windfarms were paid up to £300,000 to stop producing energy, it has emerged."

"“Iran will soon create an internet that conforms to Islamic principles, to improve its communication and trade links with the world,” he said, apparently explaining that the new network would operate in parallel to the regular Internet and would possibly eventually replace the open Internet in Muslim countries in the regions."

"Libya's rebel commanders have freed two MI6 officers and six SAS soldiers captured by farm guards on Thursday morning, after the British government vouched for their identities."

"Every Beijing mobile phone user will be tracked through the use of the latest global positioning technology, the municipal government announced on Tuesday."

"Democracy is defined by how you lose, not (just) how you win."

"An American jihadist who set up the terrorist training camp where the leader of the 2005 London suicide bombers learned how to manufacture explosives, has been quietly released after serving only four and a half years of a possible 70-year sentence, a Guardian investigation has learned."

"A Pakistani anti-terrorism court has issued an arrest warrant for former military ruler Pervez Musharraf over the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto in 2007."

"Burma's state media have published their first direct criticism of the democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi since her release from house arrest. The commentary said she and her party would "meet their tragic end" if they continued to endorse Western sanctions."

"A group of Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives is proposing to shift funds from NASA’s climate-change research coffers to the agency’s manned spaceflight program, an effort they say could preserve what they described as the agency’s core mission even as the new GOP-controlled House seeks to make good on vows to roll back federal discretionary spending this year"

"The model, named the Predictive Societal Indicators of Radicalism Model of Domestic Political Violence Forecast, is currently five for five in predicting which countries will likely experience an escalation in domestic political violence against their governments within the next five years..."

New research has shown that it is possible and affordable for the world to achieve 100 percent renewable energy by 2030, if there is the political will to strive for this goal.

"Although it was not confirmed what activities might be covered by the data Mr Elmer has passed on, the Wikileaks head noted that previous data from Julius Baer provided by Mr Elmer had shed light on tax evasion, the hiding of proceeds of criminal acts and "the protection of assets of those about to fall out of political favour"."