Author: Trent

From the Washington Post:

On a recent day in April, when U.S. aid officials flew to Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital, with several journalists, they were greeted on the tarmac by a commando-style security team that instructed the visitors on what to do if their vehicles were shot at or bombed, issued everyone flak jackets and closely guarded their convoy at every step.

When the group arrived at a tiny cucumber and eggplant patch, heavily armed Afghan and foreign security guards surrounded it. Later they fanned out across empty poppy fields, and stood guard along a dusty cobblestone road being built by former poppy farmers who are paid $4 per day by USAID.

Here.

From Dana Priest, Pulitzer prize winner at the Washington Post:

One senior European counterterrorism official, asked recently for his assessment of Goss’s leadership, responded by saying, “Who?”

Goss, then the Republican chairman of the House intelligence panel, was handpicked by the White House to purge what some in the administration viewed as a cabal of wily spies working to oppose administration policy in Iraq. “He came in to clean up without knowing what he was going to clean up,” one former intelligence official said.

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From the Washington Post:

Members of Congress privately predicted that Hayden, who once enjoyed tremendous support on the Hill, would face a contentious confirmation process over the Bush administration’s domestic spying program. Other sensitive issues, such as the existence of secret prisons abroad for terrorism suspects, also are likely to arise.

“The calculus is that would be true about anybody at this point. Given all the other stuff, like secret prisons, the confirmation is going to be tough for anybody,” a senior administration official said.

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From the Washington Post:

Brinkema replied with a smile, noting that Moussaoui had yelled “America, you lost! . . . I won!” after the jury delivered its verdict.

“Mr. Moussaoui, if you look around this courtroom today, every person in this room when this proceeding is over will leave this courtroom, and they are free to go anyplace they want,” she said before pronouncing the mandatory life sentence. “They can go outside, and they can feel the sun, they can smell fresh air . . . but when you leave this courtroom, you go back into custody. In terms of winners and losers, it is quite clear who won yesterday and who lost yesterday.”

“That was my choice!” Moussaoui interrupted.

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From The Moscow Times:

Over the last year, various religious leaders have called on their followers physically to attack gay people. It began when a group of activists declared their plans to organize a gay pride parade in Moscow in May 2006. Umar Idrisov, the chief Muslim authority in the Nizhny Novgorod region, said Muslims should stone gays if and when they march. Far from reprimanding Idrisov for calling for violence, Russia’s head mufti, Talgat Tadzhuddin, stated that all “normal people, both Muslims and Russian Orthodox,” are going to beat gay people if they come out to march. Patriarch Alexy II was not quite as crude, but he publicly thanked Mayor Yury Luzhkov for his blatantly illegal refusal to consider the organizers’ application for a parade permit. Last month, Metropolitan Kirill cited homosexuality as a chief evil value forced upon Russia by the West. The message was clear: Homosexuals don’t just lack the right to march, they don’t have the right to exist.

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From the Cape Times:

There has been no increase in reported cases of diarrhoea since rat-tailed maggots were first spotted in a Stellenbosch river at the beginning of the year, Andile Zimba, Cape Town’s acting director of health, said yesterday.

In a presentation to the health portfolio committee, Zimba said the monthly statistics for diarrhoea had shown no increases, and there was no evidence that the maggots were responsible for the diarrhoea cases.

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Editorial from The New York Times:

Last month Ollanta Humala, a military man whose family advocates the shooting of gays, Jews and Chilean investors, came in first in presidential elections. Since Mr. Humala did not get 50 percent, there will be a runoff on May 28.

More bad news: the other candidate will be Alan García, a spectacularly irresponsible and corrupt president in the late 1980’s who wrecked Peru’s economy and presided over the commission of widespread war crimes. This sorry duo topped a field that included several excellent candidates.

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From the Mail & Guardian:

In the latest case, a 41-year-old woman was tricked into having sex dozens of times with a medium who claimed to be the “Ninth Emperor of the Kingdom of God” and said she was possessed by evil spirits, newspapers reported on Wednesday.

The 52-year-old medium said her domestic and financial problems would be solved with the sex sessions, which took place over seven months at a cost of 20-50 ringgit ($5,50 to $13,85) each, during which he moved into her house.

He was eventually turfed out by the woman’s husband and has threatened to put a curse on the family.

Here.