Germany's cut-price supermarket chain Lidl was accused yesterday of using Stasi methods to spy on its staff and collect intimate details about their personal lives, including their relationships, bank accounts and the frequency of their lavatory breaks.
The allegations were published in Stern magazine, which said it had obtained hundreds of pages of surveillance reports compiled on Lidl staff in Germany and the Czech Republic by private detectives contracted to spy on employees.
Stern said the information was collected with miniature cameras that were set up in stores with the excuse that they were needed to deter shoplifters. The magazine said the style of the surveillance was almost identical to that used by the former East Germany's notorious Stasi secret police. One excerpt read: "Wednesday 14.05. Mrs M, wants to make a mobile phone call during her break, but she receives a message telling her that she has only got 85 cents left on her prepaid phone account. She finally manages to get in touch with a girlfriend with whom she would like to cook supper, but she insists that her pay must have reached her bank account by then otherwise she won't have any shopping money."
Another report from a Lidl store in the Czech Republic revealed that women staff members were banned from using the lavatory during their shifts. The only exception were women who were having their period. According to Stern, they were obliged to wear a headband, "visible from a distance", to denote the fact.
Other surveillance report entries included a comment by a detective who made disparaging remarks about a Lidl cashier's "self-made" tattoos. He suggested that she should be asked to cover them up because elderly customers might assume that she got them in prison.
Lidl did not deny the existence of the reports but insisted that they were intended to expose "possible staff misconduct". A spokesman said, however, that the allegations concerning the store in the Czech Republic were "not known to us in reality".
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Monday, April 6, 2009
Lidl accused of using Stasi tactics to spy on staff
Thousands flee bomb attacks by US drones
American drone attacks on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan are causing a massive humanitarian emergency, Pakistani officials claimed after a new attack yesterday killed 13 people.
The dead and injured included foreign militants, but women and children were also killed when two missiles hit a house in the village of Data Khel, near the Afghan border, according to local officials.
As many as 1m people have fled their homes in the Tribal Areas to escape attacks by the unmanned spy planes as well as bombings by the Pakistani army. In Bajaur agency entire villages have been flattened by Pakistani troops under growing American pressure to act against Al-Qaeda militants, who have made the area their base.
Kacha Garhi is one of 11 tented camps across Pakistan's frontier province once used by Afghan refugees and now inhabited by hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis made homeless in their own land.
So far 546,000 have registered as internally displaced people (IDPs) according to figures provided by Rabia Ali, spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and Maqbool Shah Roghani, administrator for IDPs at the Commission for Afghan Refugees.
The commissioner's office says there are thousands more unregistered people who have taken refuge with relatives and friends or who are in rented accommodation.
Jamil Amjad, the commissioner in charge of the refugees, says the government is running short of resources to feed and shelter such large numbers. A fortnight ago two refugees were killed and six injured in clashes with police during protests over shortages of water, food and tents.
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Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe
The Open Chemical Physics Journal
Volume 2
ISSN: 1874-4125
pp.7-31 (25) Authors: Niels H. Harrit, Jeffrey Farrer, Steven E. Jones, Kevin R. Ryan, Frank M. Legge, Daniel Farnsworth, Gregg Roberts, James R. Gourley, Bradley R. Larsen
doi: 10.2174/1874412500902010007
Abstract
We have discovered distinctive red/gray chips in all the samples we have studied of the dust produced by the destruction of the World Trade Center. Examination of four of these samples, collected from separate sites, is reported in this paper. These red/gray chips show marked similarities in all four samples. One sample was collected by a Manhattan resident about ten minutes after the collapse of the second WTC Tower, two the next day, and a fourth about a week later. The properties of these chips were analyzed using optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy (XEDS), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The red material contains grains approximately 100 nm across which are largely iron oxide, while aluminum is contained in tiny plate-like structures. Separation of components using methyl ethyl ketone demonstrated that elemental aluminum is present. The iron oxide and aluminum are intimately mixed in the red material. When ignited in a DSC device the chips exhibit large but narrow exotherms occurring at approximately 430 °C, far below the normal ignition temperature for conventional thermite. Numerous iron-rich spheres are clearly observed in the residue following the ignition of these peculiar red/gray chips. The red portion of these chips is found to be an unreacted thermitic material and highly energetic.
Keywords: JScanning electron microscopy, X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy, Differential scanning calorimetry, DSC analysis, World Trade Center, WTC dust, 9/11, Iron-rich microspheres, Thermite, Super-thermite, Energetic nanocomposites, Nano-thermite
Affiliation: Department of Chemistry, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, DK-2100, Denmark.
~ Bentham Open Access ~
Mystery air raid in Sudan
IN THE PAPERS: The international press propose two completely different stories on the mystery air raid in Sudan that took place last month where a convoy of suspected arms smugglers was targeted. Lots in the press about France’s 'le Pentagone'... France has decided to copy the States with their new defence ministry 'le Pentagone' and will be moving 10,000 civil and military service people to a new site
Details have just emerged of a mystery airstrike by unidentified aircraft in Sudan. The attack, in January, hit a convoy of suspected arms smugglers as it drove through Sudan toward Egypt. Two senior Sudabnese politicians say almost everyone in the convoy was killed.
The politicians, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue, told Reuters the strike took place in a remote area in east Sudan but did not say who carried it out.
Media reports in Egypt and the United States have suggested US or Israeli aircraft may have carried out the strike. Sudan's foreign minister Deng Alor told reporters in Cairo on Wednesday he had no information on any attack.
Any public confirmation of a foreign attack would have a major impact in Sudan, where relations with the West are already tense following the International Criminal Court's decision this month to issue an arrest warrant for President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on charges of Darfur war crimes.
Egyptian independent newspaper Al-Shorouk quoted "knowledgeable Sudanese sources" this week as saying aircraft from the United States were involved in the strike, which it said killed 39 people.
The US Embassy in Khartoum on Thursday declined to comment. Sudan remains on a US list of state sponsors of terrorism, but the State Department has said that Sudan is cooperating with efforts against militant groups.
US-based CBS News, however, reported on its website on Wednesday that its security correspondent had been briefed that Israeli aircraft had carried out an attack in eastern Sudan, targeting an arms delivery to the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in Gaza.
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