Poor Mojo's Newswire

BEIJING — China considered using a drone strike in a mountainous region of Southeast Asia to kill a Myanmar drug lord wanted in the killings of 13 Chinese sailors, but decided instead to capture him alive, according to an influential state-run newspaper. The plan to use a drone, described to the Global Times newspaper by a senior public security official, highlights China’s increasing capacity in unmanned aerial warfare, a technology dominated by the United States and used widely by the Obama administration for the targeted killing of terrorists. Liu Yuejin, the director of the public security ministry’s antidrug bureau, told the newspaper that the plan called for using a drone carrying explosives to bomb the outlaw’s hide-out in the opium-growing area of Myanmar in the Golden Triangle at the intersection of Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. China’s law enforcement officials were under pressure from an outraged public to take action after 13 Chinese sailors on two cargo ships laden with narcotics were killed in October 2011 on the Mekong River. Photos of the dead sailors, their bodies gagged and blindfolded and some with head wounds suggesting execution-style killings, circulated on China’s Internet. . . .

The United States government has been known to respond rather aggressively toward individuals and foreign entities it believes are violating American intellectual property law. (Ask Kim Dotcom.) But relatively few countries have responded by seeking (and receiving) international authorization to directly, openly flaunt American copyright. On Monday, the World Trade Organization granted the Caribbean nation of Antigua and Barbuda the ability to suspend “certain concessions and obligations it has under international law to the United States in respect of intellectual property rights,” as the result of an ongoing dispute between Washington and Saint John’s. In other words, Antigua and Barbuda will now be allowed to open up its own internationally blessed“pirate” site, undoubtedly full of American films, TV shows, music, and software. The roots of this disagreement, like many feuds, center on money. The 81,000-person nation has long argued it should be allowed to use its offshore gambling sites to compete in the United States, where gambling is highly regulated. In a statement released Monday, the tiny country’s finance minister said Antigua and Barbuda’s economy has been “devastated” as a result of American action. The country claims the sector once employed more than 4,000 people (around five percent of the entire country) and has since fallen to 500. Proceeds from the industry “helped fund public education, healthcare, and the country’s infrastructure, and the income boosted consumer spending and other economic activity associated with a vibrant, high-tech industry.” “These aggressive efforts to shut down the remote gaming industry in Antigua have resulted in the loss of thousands of good paying jobs and seizure by the Americans of billions of dollars belonging to gaming operators and their customers in financial institutions across the world,” said Harold Lovell, Antigua’s Finance Minister, in a statement.

The debunkers zeroed in on the West Wyoming Marathon, the one race that Litton had supposedly won outright. One of them came across a Web cache of the race’s defunct home page, which included this caveat: “With a low entry fee, there will be no goodie bags, no shirts, no photographer and no finishers medals.” On January 11, 2011, a poster called Liptodakip wrote, “Still curious about the west Wyoming marathon. 29 runners total. And he won it. Anyone know anything about it? Is it a real race? The main page is down and now the results are gone. (was up last week). did he make up an entire race? That would be bold!” Yes, it would. And, yes, he did. LetsRun exploded: West Wyoming was Litton’s pi�ce de r�sistance, and even his most indignant accusers had to concede their perverse admiration. In this race, the key to winning was ingeniously uncomplicated: Make the whole thing up! For his fabricated marathon, Litton had assembled not only a Web site but also a list of finishers and their times (plus name, age, gender, and home town), and created a phantom race director, who responded to e-mail queries. It occurred to Kyle Strode that six months earlier, when he had raised questions about Litton to “Richard Rodriguez,” the reply (“Wow, that’s quite a scenario!”) had omitted a crucial detail. When Richard Rodriguez looked in the mirror, Litton looked back. In concocting the fantasy, someone had gone so far as to create a post-race testimonial for the Web site Marathon Guide.