Four Lions trailer

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No Russian

No surprise this is controversial: the level "No Russian" from the video game Modern Warfare 2 has gained notoriety for its warped game play. As an undercover CIA agent embedded with Russian terrorists, the level takes you through an assault on Moscow airport, killing heaps of civilians and even awarding achievements for certain combos.

The "Machinima" version above is a re-telling of the mission in movie format, using a cinematic camera to follow the NPC action. No matter if you like the content, this is pretty well-done.

The High Definite » Modern Warfare 2: The Movie

Suicide bombing in Sri Lanka

This image made from video shows an explosion as it happened among a group of Sri Lankan Muslim men performing during a religious procession in Akuressa, in Matara, south of Colombo, Sri Lanka, Tuesday, March 10, 2009. A suspected Tamil Tiger suicide bomber killed 14 people and wounded 35, including Sri Lanka's telecommunications minister, during the Muslim festival, officials said.

Sri Lanka and its long war - The Big Picture - Boston.com

Chinese Segway police

Still one of my favorite photos of 2008: the Beijing Olympic Segway Police.

In this photo released by the official Xinhua news agency, members of China's armed police demonstrate a rapid deployment during an anti-terrorist drill held in Jinan, east China, on Wednesday July 2, 2008, roughly one month ahead of the Beijing Olympic Games.

2008 in photographs (part 2 of 3) - The Big Picture - Boston.com

Mumbai terrorist attacks

The bodies of at least six victims of Wednesday's shootings lie on the floor of the Chattrapati Shivaji Terminus railway station in Mumbai November 26, 2008.

Injured Indian security personnel lie at the Chatrapathi Sivaji Terminal railway station in Mumbai, India, Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2008. The two men later died from their wounds.

Mumbai under attack - The Big Picture

The falling man

They began jumping not long after the first plane hit the North Tower, not long after the fire started. They kept jumping until the tower fell. They jumped through windows already broken and then, later, through windows they broke themselves. They jumped to escape the smoke and the fire; they jumped when the ceilings fell and the floors collapsed; they jumped just to breathe once more before they died. They jumped continually, from all four sides of the building, and from all floors above and around the building's fatal wound. They jumped from the offices of Marsh & McLennan, the insurance company; from the offices of Cantor Fitzgerald, the bond-trading company; from Windows on the World, the restaurant on the 106th and 107th floors -- the top.

For more than an hour and a half, they streamed from the building, one after another, consecutively rather than en masse, as if each individual required the sight of another individual jumping before mustering the courage to jump himself or herself. One photograph, taken at a distance, shows people jumping in perfect sequence, like parachutists, forming an arc composed of three plummeting people, evenly spaced. Indeed, there were reports that some tried parachuting, before the force generated by their fall ripped the drapes, the tablecloths, the desperately gathered fabric, from their hands. They were all, obviously, very much alive on their way down, and their way down lasted an approximate count of ten seconds.

Esquire Online: The Falling Man - Tom Junod - 9/11 Suicide Photograph

More World Trade Center jumpers at Flickr.com

Jean-Paul Sartre's visit to Andreas Baader

November 1974, Stuttgart - Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (center) interviews Andreas Baader in Stammheim Prison at Ulrike Meinhof's request. On the left is Baader-Meinhof lawyer Klaus Croissant, and on the right is Sartre's driver in Stuttgart, Hans Joachim Klein, who later goes underground after joining in terrorist actions with "Carlos the Jackal."

Baader-Meinhof.com: Timeline 1974

"We then spoke of his life in prison. I asked him why he was on a hunger strike. He answered that he was doing it in protest against the conditions of his incarceration.

As we now know, there are a certain number of cells in the prison I went to, but these also exist in other German prisons. They are separated from the other cells; they are painted white and the electricity works until 11:00 pm, and sometimes 24 hours out of 24.

And there’s something he’s missing: sound. Apparatuses in the interior of the cell select sounds, weaken them and render them perfectly inaudible within the cell itself. [...]

These procedures, reserved for political prisoners alone — at least, those of the Baader-Meinhof Group — are procedures contrary to the Rights of Man.

According to the Rights of Man, a prisoner should be treated like a man. To be sure, he is locked up, but he shouldn’t be the object of any torture, or anything having as its goal to bring on the death or degradation of the human person. This system is precisely against the human person and destroys it."

Jean-Paul Sartre 1974: The Slow Death of Andreas Baader

The Baader-Meinhof myth was born inside Stammheim prison. Leftwing sympathisers, including the country's most prominent writers and intellectuals, maintained that they were being tortured in appalling conditions. Stammheim was "like Auschwitz", they absurdly claimed.

Celebrities, like the novelist Heinrich Böll and the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, were wheeled in to dramatise their plight. Although the aged Frenchman privately observed "what an a***hole" after being lectured by Baader in the jail's spartan visitors' suite, on live German TV he lied: "Baader has the face of a tortured man." [...]

Actually, their wing was comfortable; they could choose the colour of the walls. Their cells had libraries and Baader had 974 books including Contemporary Explosives Technology and the Special Forces Handbook. [...]

The cells had electric blankets, which the terrorists had insisted on, to keep the electricity on at night. The inmates promptly converted high-fi amplifiers and the warders' intercoms into a communication network.

Mail online: Clowns of terror: The Baader-Meinhof gang were hopelessly incompetent, befuddled by drugs and casual sex